The question I have is this: is a fifth Monday a magical phenomenon? Is it the physical manifestation of the impossibility of containing all of life within a system?

Or is it just a neutral fact and nothing to get excited or delighted about?

Maybe it’s both. Perhaps you’re sure it’s one or the other.

Magic or fact, the point is, the choice is yours.

As I looked at the approaching fifth Monday and pondered on my own observance of it as magic more than fact, I was reminded of a recent conversation with a friend in which I told her about the differences I’d witnessed in two women who both made a mistake and the reaction each had.

“This would make a great newsletter post,” I thought to myself at the time.

I believe I even said it out loud to her, as when the inspiration strikes I’m a talk-it-out kind of gal. Hard to imagine, I know.

So I wrote down the idea in my Notes app and left it. Several times now I’ve looked at the idea and wondered “Will I write about that this week?” but, until now, I’ve not had the feeling to act on it.

Sometimes that feeling can frustrate me because I feel I need to push through and make it happen.

Force over flow, says my mind.

Trust the timing, I hear more deeply and, crucially, calmly.

“But it’s not happening! It NEEDS to happen!!” my mind argues.

“It will,” my inner voice assures me.

At this point, my mind understands it’s not going to get its way and begins to soothe itself with evidence of past occasions when that has been true. When I have thought “that’s not happening” and then one day the energy aligns and it gets done and — again, crucially — feels pretty fun and easy to do.

Some days, past evidence might not be enough to soothe my mind but it soon finds another worry to get me het up about and so it’s happy and I’m, well, human.

So it was that this week my mind was merrily getting het up about other things and hadn’t even looked at my Notes app. Hadn’t even asked, “Will I write that” when the calendar’s slip-up, the fifth Monday, its tiny imperfection, the choice of is it magic or fact, made me get that belly yes.

And now it’s the final day of August and here we are…

The two women did not make their mistakes on the same day. In fact, they didn’t even happen in the same year. As far as I know, the two women do not know each other. Yet, to me, they’ve become inextricably linked.

Not so much for the content of their mistakes — don’t worry, I’ll tell you about that too — but for their reactions.

Darla and Dana weren’t their names but, in the Match My Freq universe, that’s precisely how they’ll be known.

Let’s start with Darla.

Darla was sitting in the boardroom across from me, figures printed and various paperwork scattered around. I enjoyed meetings with Darla because she was kind and I knew we’d have a good conversation around the work we were doing.

As for the work itself, I said it was scattered around us, but really it was in organised piles because that’s how Darla and I rolled.

She was as meticulous and as well-organised as I was.

That kind of energy? The feeling of being met, that someone was supporting you with their colour-coded files? Well, it’s something you always remember.

You never forget the day someone walks into your life with organisers, index flags, and the air that stationery shopping is a beloved pastime of theirs. Never.

We’d had our cursory conversation and were now getting deep into the numbers when I spotted an error in the figures Darla had forecast.

I can’t even remember what the mistake was, only that my view of it was that it was quite minor. Something that needed to be called out but that was it. Just a fact.

Maybe it was more consequential than I’m remembering it and it’s just that Darla’s reaction to the mistake felt so disproportionate that I’ve minimised it in my memory.

Gone was the chirpy Darla. Instantly. Her face went bright red and she found it impossible to make eye contact with me. She started to furiously go about editing her figures. I couldn’t even enjoy the fact she was doing so with a beautiful, thick-but-not-too-thick red pen.

I was shocked at how easily Darla was crumbling and I actually considered that she might cry and whether I ought to give her some space to recover.

Now I’ve made some epic mistakes in my time.

Once, I locked kids out of a classroom. I’ve locked a bank safe that wasn’t meant to be locked.

Hmm…I’m suddenly seeing a theme of my mistakes being largely about locking things up and I feel there’s probably something to psychoanalyse there…

But back to Darla!

I’ve made epic mistakes and I’ve seen epic mistakes made.

Years ago, in a different office, someone I worked with — we’ll call her Patricia — was sending out two sets of emails. One was congratulatory for those who had won a grant while the other was commiseratory for those who weren’t successful. She accidentally sent the congratulations email to the rejects and sent the commiserations email to the winners.

On a Friday afternoon.

Oh boy.

I still remember the hope we were pinning on email recall working and then being let down. In a way stationery never would, mind you.

Patricia eventually called everyone to explain what had happened and made profuse apologies. She’d been distressed, sure, but Darla’s distress made me worried for her mental state in a way I’d never worried about Patricia’s. Or my own.

The meeting went on with Darla but, if I’m honest, her stationery never brought me the same peace again. Instead, I became wary that she might discover an error and I’d lose her completely.

For someone so assured, so fun, with such good banter, I couldn’t believe who she became when faced with her own humanness.

Except, of course, I could because I’ve felt harassed by my own humanity, my own fallibility. I’ve become stricken when I’ve over-identified with an aspect of myself and feel it’s been threatened.

I recall sobbing when a bathroom leak sent water into my bedroom and a box of my newspaper clippings was impacted.

That’s right, impacted. Not destroyed.

Eventually they dried out and were fine except for a little warping. But, oh, how I cried!

“What else do I have if not them?!” I lamented.

I’m pleased to say I feel I have so much more than just my writing now, that I am more than any achievement or perfect record. But I’ve absolutely been Darla and I’m quietly confident I might be her again one day. I’m just yet to meet the right lock.

So that was Darla.

Dana, on the other hand, I met on a writer's retreat.

Oh, how my writerly self would’ve loved the identification with going on a retreat and tippity typing away. Creating something from stringing words together.

I say would have because I don’t remember that being the case. Instead, I recall being struck with quite the bout of imposter syndrome.

I guess you can’t time these things.

The moment with Dana came as we were reading out our work and the circle of fellow writers was giving us feedback.

“What a slut!” Dana said, in reaction to a discussion we were having about a character.

We all laughed. Because we agreed, and also partially because Dana was much older than us and there’s something innately humorous in a white-haired, elderly person being profane.

We moved on. None of us aware that in that moment Dana was reckoning with herself in a similar way that Darla had. They’d both recognised a mistake and I’m sure there must’ve been quite a bit going on for both of them internally.

It was just that with Darla it had been very obvious while with Dana I, along with the other writers, was completely oblivious.

That was until Dana interjected into the continuing conversation.

“I’m sorry, but I take that back. Slut was such an easy thing for me to say but I don’t like that it’s what I said and I’d like to take it back.”

We were all a little stunned. In awe, really.

I’d never heard someone so quickly identify that they’d done something that didn’t meet the standard she expected of herself, and then work to remedy it.

Instead I was used to the shame that Darla had worn on her face, the doubling down, the avoidance of repair at all costs. Not even repair. Just acknowledging the self-disappointment.

I often think of Dana. And Darla too. But particularly Dana as for me she exemplified the kind of person I want to be.

The kind of person who can make a mistake, not meet my own standard, and apologise to those around me, and also forgive myself.

Once Dana had spoken it, it was so. There was no explaining herself or justification. No repentance required, no self-flagellation.

There was just the mistake. And from it she made magic.

She took a fact of life — that we will make mistakes, that we cannot be contained to be pure beings who have transcended all error — and from it she made her own meaning.

I guess that’s why this fifth Monday made me think of Darla and Dana.

Of the different ways we can be.

Of the days we are Darla and want to crumble from our own failing to be perfect. Ironic, as to me in that moment we are being perfectly human. We are human-ing perfectly.

And of the days we are Dana. Taking mistakes and fifth Mondays and digesting them. Owning them. Letting ourselves be what we are. Fallible.

Dana also represents to me the beauty of living out our experience fully for ourselves. Of how influential, how powerful we can become in that moment. How it can be so generous an act.

A few years later, I heard that Dana died. She’d done some amazing things in her life and people were talking about them.

But they didn’t know how incredible she really was. What a true leader she had really been.

How she changed a room by saying the word “slut.”

Or perhaps they had because I presume to be so well-versed in self-forgiveness and owning your mistakes, you’ve probably made quite a few of them and learned how you want to show up.

Perhaps Dana had had her own Dana who had shown her the way.

I don’t know. What I do know is that fifth Mondays happen. Imperfections happen.

And in those moments you can be a Darla or you can be a Dana. It’s why I chose such similar sounding names. The choice is distinct but your arrival there is from the same place. Mistake first. You can’t avoid it just like you can’t avoid the slight confusion of two characters similarly named.

May you take your own slut-drops, physical or verbal, with you this week and let them be. For they can be magic if you let them.

Be well, take care, and talk soon.

Megan

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I write this to you from my “home” in Ireland, the use of inverted commas because the notion of home has loosened in my mind.

After almost two years living in Ireland, my recent five-week return to my other “home” in Australia, which included visits to multiple places I feel at home in, dislodged any certainty I had about home.

It’s there. It’s here. It’s nowhere. It’s everywhere.

I’m living the question of home right now, Gar, but one thing I can write with complete certainty is this — I am one lucky lady.

I feel so grateful for all the homes I have, and for the people that I love and miss and who love and miss me.

How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard?!

It’s a quote my younger sister in particular loves, and one we’ve always believed A.A. Milne wrote for Winnie the Pooh. But according to the internet fact-check my journalism degree has begrudgingly led me to complete, that’s fake news.

Apparently, the quote is actually a paraphrase from some 1975 film, The Other Side of the Mountain. How it got to be misattributed to Milne, and the depths of the truth here — I’ve not got the time or desire to care.

Whoever said it, however it got here, I’m grateful for the words because honestly, how lucky am I?!

Now, it’s only just past the 72-hour mark since I got back here and I’m quite jet-lagged because I regrettably did not precisely follow my jet-lag prevention app. You try staying awake in a pressurised cabin in complete darkness, everyone else around you slumbering, all while being gently rocked by light turbulence after a very full five weeks. Go on, you try it! Which is to say this letter may run the risk of becoming a soppy love letter if I’m not careful. My heart is just so full, Gary! So full.

But in the interest of keeping you interested, I know I did promise in my last letter to tell you about the heinous woman I sat next to on the plane over to Australia. I’m a woman of my word and that story is attached to this letter (ahem, see the link above).

Thankfully, on all my flights back to Ireland, I was sat next to lovely people. There was a gal from New Caledonia travelling to France for her third year of studying medicine. And beside her was a 6ft 6in tall, dark, handsome guy with ties to Ireland. Hello!

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Change and choosing differently are available to us always. In every moment.

To prove that, I’m writing my A Constant Reminder post mid-month rather than waiting until August is wrapped to see what theme might have been emerging for me and write words accordingly.

Because I believe it’s a fallacy that we need to wait for the right time before we act.

At least, I hold that belief when the “right time” is externally set. For example, if you are waiting until a new month because then your before and after will be neat and tidy. Or you’ve decided your best chance to win is to start on a day where there’s no stress. That you can eradicate failures, slip-ups, falling back into the old pattern if you just choose the right day to hit reset.

But humans don’t come with reset buttons — unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you want to see it.

You can’t just go back to factory settings and start anew. And who would actually truly want to?

I know it sounds appealing, but who would really want to begin again? To live a life with no errors? To get it right every time?

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I mean, theoretically, I’d love that. I’d love to bathe in that feeling, to gracefully hover through my days and my life without ever making a choice that doesn’t align with me, to be so steadfast in who I am and my patterns and routine.

Except, in reality, the person I am loves variety. Getting things wrong actually makes me grow, connect with others, understand myself and people more. It’s kind of fun…getting something wrong to then learn what is right. For you.

Contrast is key to everything. Without darkness, there would be no light, no bright shining stars in the night. And a lot of the time knowing what you don’t want is just as valuable as knowing what you do want.

Sure, these are all truisms we’ve heard and known and practiced. But that’s the point of this monthly article — to acknowledge our propensity to forget what we know and to come back to remembering.

Because while humans don’t come with reset buttons, what we do have is a pretty incredible recalibration system, the brain.

And if we give ourselves moments to reflect and check in with ourselves internally, we will start to notice so much.

You can notice how your reaction to something is different now. You might be calmer, sure, or perhaps you’re expressing your anger properly for the first time without fear. And feeling the freedom of that while noticing the discomfort of the change. Of the brain going “It feels better here but it felt safer when we kept our anger contained.”

You can notice how you’ve been setting yourself up for failure by setting a “right time” that success will come rather than just embracing the mess and starting where you are and letting progress come in increments.

You can notice so much when you stop and allow yourself just a breath.

I know it can feel impossible to do, but if you’re reading this, you’re already succeeding in a moment of choosing you.

There are so many ways to build a practice of remembering what you already know.

And when I said I believe it’s a fallacy that we need to wait for the right time to act, I do also believe there will be a right time to act. For you.

It won’t necessarily be a Monday or a first day of the month, though it could incidentally work out that way.

What it will be is a moment when you are willing.

A moment when the momentum has shifted directions. When you’ve slowed down the car that is you from careening down a highway that no longer suits and choosing a new lane. And just like a car, you’ll likely start slowly. You might burn some rubber during takeoff, but there’ll still be the time it takes to speed up and stabilise. The energy that takes is monumental and different for everyone.

So this month, right now in the middle of it, can you allow yourself the grace to move when it suits you? To not wait until it suits others or the calendar, but simply choose you?

It might mean that when you do act, the momentum has built enough for you to start the car. Or you might still be hitting the brakes on the old way.

Can you allow yourself that moment, to notice how great it is, how brave, to make the choice to stop moving in a direction you no longer want to go?

You could be somewhere in between an ending and a beginning. It could feel like purgatory. A cocoon moment where you are no longer a caterpillar and not yet a butterfly. Britney Spears got it and wrote a whole song on the premise — “I’m not a girl / Not yet a woman”.

She understood she just needed a moment in between. Can you allow yourself that?

You could be travelling down a road at top speed, or even coasting along, which I’d argue is ironically more dangerous, and just realising that you aren’t sure that the direction you’re going is the direction you want to keep travelling. It just felt easy letting the car roll on and on and on.

It actually might be what you need. To keep going down the old road for a few kilometres longer to learn what you need and gain the energy to change.

Wherever you are, you can choose a new beginning whenever you want. And when you want it, you will. You don’t need to fear you will miss the chance. You won’t.

I can’t say when the right time is for you. No one can. Only you will know.

Can you trust yourself to make that call?

Can you trust a feeling that might have surfaced reading this, even if that feeling was disagreement? For example, perhaps when I said that you don’t need to wait until XYZ happens or ABC event is over to try a new way, you felt major resistance to that. You felt rage in your belly hearing that and your energy, which already felt depleted, suddenly and instantly drained. Great. Trust that.

I used to feel that way and instead of letting that be the truth of what I felt, I would make myself wrong and go, “Well, clearly I have to change.” I felt I had to align myself to the speaker’s or writer’s way.

But I don’t. Neither do you.

And when I said “I used to feel that way”, what I really ought to have written was “I can feel that way” because I still can and do. It happens less now because I love to spend my time noticing me. And others. Cheering us all on.

To choose what feels aligned for me. For you.

Trust your own feeling. Please.

You know more than you think you do. You can feel it’s true.

The month is not over. Even if it was, it’s never too late to choose again. To try. To see what happens.

Because a beginning comes from a moment of willingness rather than a date on the calendar.

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Sure, afterwards it can become an important date on the calendar, one that’s important to you, like an anniversary or birthday. But first you must choose.

Are you willing?

To move.

To stop.

To slow down.

To allow yourself to keep going living the question.

To trust that not knowing if it’s time to stop means it’s not.

That knowing it is means it is.

May you embrace the mess of braking, of retiring an old vehicle or route or ritual and moving in a completely new way. Or even a slightly altered way.

Increments matter. And so do you.

May you have fun in the choosing. I’ll be here rallying for you.

Be well, take care, and talk soon.

Megan

It’s as if we haven’t ever gotten over the scientific feat of taking to the skies, the magic of flying. That as we make our way into an airport, check our bags, and get scanned through security, we are not only surrounded by a variety of travellers and overpriced airport food, but also possibility.

A sense of possibility so potent it makes us susceptible to feeling as if we are suspended not only in the air but in our own lives. That anything could happen.

For the single and hopelessly romantic among us, anything very quickly includes the possibility we could, this flight, or maybe the next one, find ourselves suspended in the romcom of our dreams.

Who hasn’t boarded a plane with an empty seat next to them and wondered who might fill it?

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Of course, there’s the primary hope that it won’t be filled at all, or at least not by someone you perceive to be annoying.

I was going to say someone with a child, with the token screaming baby, but I feel that’s only true for some people. I personally would rather be sat next to a family or parent tackling the daunting task of travelling with their kids than next to a host of other people. Like, say, the rude, the smelly, or, perhaps worst of all, the romantic.

Ironic, I know, given what I’ve already said and where I’m headed with my secondary hope, the hope that the empty seat beside you might just be filled with, to quote Taylor Swift, “a best friend who I think is hot.”

But that’s the frustrating thing about romance and dating — it’s disappointing until it isn’t, and there’s nothing worse than finding yourself the object of someone’s misplaced affection.

By misplaced, I really mean being the apple of someone’s eye, someone who has cast you as their leading lady without any audition or requirement that you understand the role, can act, etc.

Give me 10 screaming babies over a three-hour flight beside someone who’s gotten it into their head that I’m The One.

I fully acknowledge that I’m saying this as someone who has probably (ahem, definitely) been that person. Who’s seen an attractive man and asked probing questions about his work, his life, and quickly sized him up for the open position of Boyfriend.

On one flight from Brisbane to Townsville a few years ago, I took things a step further, bypassing any questioning at all and simply nuzzling into my boyfriend…I mean, neighbour…for the 90-minute flight.

It had been a big weekend and I thought I was simply hungover and feeling precious. Unfortunately, for all involved, I was actually succumbing to a terrible strain of influenza.

Gentle music was playing through my noise-cancelling headphones and I was staring out my window, too poorly to even consider the question of the stranger who might sit beside me, when a big, burly man with a lovely beard sat down and took up about 120% of his seat’s capacity. Normally that could be frustrating, but his aura and size just made everything feel cosier and safer. Like a boyfriend should.

I found myself magnetised to his shoulder and when he got his iPad out and started playing Man on Fire with Denzel Washington and Dakota Fanning, I couldn’t help but feel he was a fiercely protective Denzel looking out for the pale, vulnerable Dakota I’d become. I was watching his screen indiscriminately, which I became absolutely certain about the minute he gave up trying to angle his screen away from me and instead turned on subtitles. Without asking. Again, as a boyfriend should!

As soon as those subtitles were on, I took it that we were now officially dating and snuggled on in for the rest of the flight. It was bliss.

We said our first words to each other when we landed and he had to turn off his iPad, although I would like to add he kept it on through landing and only stopped the movie — our movie — when people started to disembark around us and the shroud of airport possibility began to dissipate.

“We almost made it,” I said to him, wistfully.

I now actually can’t remember if he said any words in response to me or just laughed, acknowledging my breakup line. It doesn’t matter. It was the perfect relationship for me that day.

For how well he treated me, I sincerely hope my ex did not start to feel unwell 48-72 hours later. He didn’t deserve that.

As for the woman who sat next to me on the 14-hour flight from Doha to Brisbane recently, I wouldn’t mind in the slightest if I’d heard she contracted pneumonia.

No, I really mean it.

Okay, so maybe not pneumonia, but a little trip, slip or fall. A minor inconvenience. Getting stuck in really bad traffic congestion. Or all of the above. I really don’t mind.

I knew it was likely to be a tumultuous journey when I went to check-in and all that was left was a seat in the middle of the middle. A bank of three seats on the left of the plane, a bank of three seats on the right of the plane, and four seats in the middle. One of the two middle seats? Well, they had her name and mine on them.

I’d been hoping the war in the Middle East might deter travellers and afford me a Business Class experience in Economy, but alas, it was not meant to be.

When I finally made the 14-hour journey to my seat, I found the woman in question — let’s call her Sandra — sitting there, unpacking her belongings. In my seat. My seat!

“Excuse me, I think you might be in my seat,” I gently broached, following the social grace of adding “I think” when really I knew.

“I know!” Sandra barked back at me, practically frothing with rage.

My stomach dropped.

I’ve repealed a lot of people pleasing legislation the government of me, myself & I had been running our nation on for decades, but their memory lives on and I sometimes forget I don’t have to follow those rules anymore.

This was already a loooooong flight…and it felt like it was about to get even longer!

Even though I hadn’t been the rude one in the interaction, I felt a need to try to connect with Sandra. To show her I was not her adversary. I could be friend rather than foe.

I abandoned that pretty quickly when I gave her my best introductory “Guess we’re in this together” smile and she rolled her eyes at me.

You can imagine my distress when, after takeoff, the cabin darkened and I noticed above us a panel of lights, one seemingly giant orb of light descending right above the head of, you guessed it, Sandra.

Not that she was reading. Ever since Sandra had finally gotten out of my seat and into her seat, she had been sitting in eerie stillness, covered in the supplied blanket, and staring at her screen.

I set about turning my switch on and off as a preliminary indication to Sandra that I was hoping to figure out how to turn off that light. Not that she took the bait. Not even a nibble.

This was going to require a direct ask.

Instead, I asked the other woman beside me — let’s call her Lily — if she could check if it was her light. I’ll admit I’d been avoiding contact with Lily after things had gone so poorly with Sandra, but the interaction went down seamlessly.

Of course it wasn’t Lily’s light. I knew that going in, but still asking the question had bought me some time to muster up some courage and afforded me the chance to show Sandra how humans can pleasantly speak to one another. Not that she was watching, which only made me feel more superior to her. And, oh, how I love to feel morally superior!

It appeared I was not only morally superior but also superior to Sandra in cowardice as it took me another full minute to ask her if she could check if it was her light.

She just raised her eyebrows, indicating that I was a piece of shit and pathetic for requesting darkness, but that if I did demand it, then I could press the button and see. She wasn’t moving for nobody.

I tried not to appear like the weak, half-eaten gazelle that I felt I was as I pressed the button and her light actually turned on.

After all that, it wasn’t Sandra’s light but her other neighbour — let’s call her Barbara.

Barbara, having witnessed me pressing Sandra’s button immediately leant over and said, “Oh, are you wanting the light off?” and pressed her switch, following up with an apologetic “I’m so sorry. I didn’t think it was mine.” I wanted to say, Don’t worry, honey. None of us did.

Soothed by the interaction with Barbara and our row now finally darkened, I let myself be engulfed by it.

Hours later, I woke up and was ready for a bathroom break. I was looking for my shoes and had found one but the other seemed to have gone AWOL during my slumber. I looked at Sandra’s blanket. I just knew it was under there.

This time, I didn’t hesitate for long and explained my shoe was missing and could I look under her blanket please because maybe it was there?

“It’s not.”

In the time it had taken me to receive Sandra’s deadpan response, Lily had gotten out of her seat so I now had some room to get on my knees to look for my shoe. Barbara noticed and again leant over Sandra — brave Barb, I ought to call her — and asked if I needed help.

Surprisingly, annoyingly, my shoe was not under Sandra’s blanket.

After I’d used the bathroom, I pulled out the pouch of hyaluronic acid serum I’d purchased at the Doha Airport. When I dropped the tiny lid for it between Sandra and me, I didn’t even bother to say a word. It may as well have fallen into the abyss.

Our next interaction occurred close to Australia when the dreaded Incoming Passenger Cards for customs are handed out. I’d been at the back of the plane staring out of a window, trying to get sunlight, as per the instructions of the app I was using to try to prevent jet lag. When I returned to my seat, Sandra was talking to a man in the middle seat of the left-hand 3-seater beside us. What couple sit separately on a long-haul flight, I wondered. And who was putting up with Sandra on a day-to-day basis?

Her interaction with her boyfriend at least revealed to me what Sandra was. Distrusting. I surmised this as I realised she’d left her cup of orange juice with him while she used the bathroom, and now here she was, collecting it off him as she handed him her customs card for him to fill out. She was trying to get back into her seat with her orange juice — her tray table down, mind you, and both Lily and I out of our seats — when I decided now that we were in our final hour of flight together, I may as well try one last time to connect.

“Would you like me to hold your juice while you get in?” I asked, or at least started to ask.

Sandra cut me off with a curt, decisive “No!”

Once we were sitting back down, I busied myself hydrating my skin with more serum and said under my breath, “I hope you spill your orange juice on yourself.”

It’s honestly the consciously meanest thing I’ve ever said out loud to someone.

Our arrival in Brisbane brought with it relief in so many ways. The most surprising of which was that I found the lid for my serum. It turned out, unlike my shoe, it had fallen under Sandra’s blanket. Unsurprisingly, its retrieval involved no help from Sandra whatsoever, who sat watching me try to contort my body to reach forward and grab it.

When we got off the plane, Sandra and her boyfriend were in front of me heading for Customs and I felt it was only fair to part ways with the hope that they found an illegal substance in her luggage.

As the days wore on in Australia, I mentioned my interaction with Sandra to several of my nearest and dearest. Everyone’s reaction was extremely validating in that they felt she was vile.

Too much validation and I start to question myself.

Was Sandra actually vile or was she just a woman who wasn’t conforming to the ideals of femininity that the world expected of her? Was she actually just somebody comfortable with taking up space? And were Barb and I, in our eager helpfulness and pathetic desire to connect, actually the problem?

Or was there actually no villain at all in this story?

The questions plagued me. They still do.

The conclusion I have come to is that two things can be true. Sandra was rude. She also was not a bad person. At least, not necessarily…

I also know there are days when I can do my best Sandra and take up space comfortably, without worrying about how I’m being perceived. On other days, I shrink myself in unnecessary ways.

The interaction with Sandra, Lily and Barbara also made me realise how quickly I cast for the role of not only Imaginary Airport Boyfriend, but also villain, hero, victim.

When maybe those roles never existed.

Maybe all there was were empty seats on a plane that I filled with stories.

After all, isn’t that the magic of flying? That anything is possible.

Be well, take care, and talk soon.

Megan

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It was during this mud fight, in the throes of chaotic fun, that I realised my perception of one of my nephews had been wrong and was reminded yet again that the way we perceive what we see is imperfect. Messy, even. In this case, certainly muddy.

Only a few minutes ago, I’d been sitting beside the creek with my older sister, who was encouraging her four children to go off and play. I’d suggested they build rock towers and one of my nephews had decided to erect his stony pillar directly in front of us while the remaining three milled around closely.

They are all still young enough to perceive adults as knowing exactly what they're doing—talk about imperfect perception! It's a heady thing to be around that kind of faith. Also, terrifying.

Another perception of my young niblings appears to be that they will miss out on the fun and “big stuff” if they step outside of the imaginary 3-metre radius that surrounds us. That the fun of having me as their aunty watch (ahem, perceive) what they are doing is greater than the fun of exploring. Oh, the sweet innocence and blissful ignorance of children!

I decided to put my feet in the creek, feel the flow of water around me, and so up I hopped from our picnic blanket. The niblings left it the customary amount of time to not look like they were following me but being similarly drawn to the water before they began to circle and descend.

Paper bark boat races and crocs (the footwear, not the animal) started to float down the tiny cascades.

The abundance of muddy waste just begging to be thrown was noticed. A certain aunt — me — was accidentally splashed as a rock was moved to improve the flow. My squeal of surprise produced more laughter, which led to more splashes that were quickly losing their accidental status.

Inevitably, the first ball of moss was thrown, and our muddy battle began.

My two older nieces and my older nephew were swift and sharp, landing their mark on me time and again, and I was busy launching my own counterattack. My youngest nephew, Nash, not yet 4 years old, stood on the periphery and threw his own projectiles. I was mindfully sending some back his way, making sure to avoid actually hitting him.

As the fight’s intensity grew, I turned again to Nash standing there and started to perceive that maybe he felt left out. That I’d been directing too many to the others and that he’d like to be hit. So I gathered up some leaves and flung them at him, letting them land at his feet, the spray of muddy water splashing his legs.

At first I thought his reaction was laughter…and then I realised that it was, in fact, tears.

My apologies were immediate and profuse. “Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry,” I repeated over and over as I made my way across the rocky waterhole to soothe my devastated nephew.

How to tell him what I had perceived? To explain myself? I couldn’t.

Apologies and check-ins continued and gratefully my older nephew, Dalton, walloped me with a muddy missile to the side of my face and into my eyes as I reached my bawling nephew. Dalton is Nash’s idol, so his throw helped to alleviate the devastation that I’d actually hit Nash and gotten him wet.

It turned out that Nash actually hadn’t wanted to be any more actively involved than he was. My perception had been, unlike my throw, a miss.

He did forgive me, eventually, once the feeling had been felt, and as my penance I promised to stand and take as many hits of mud from the firing squad of niblings as Nash instructed.

Later, as I tried to wash all the dirt and grime off me, the image of earlier cooking sessions with my young niblings came back to me and I recalled how a young child can feel as though they have contributed to baking by the slightest involvement, like letting them hold your hand as you pour the ingredients in.

Nash had felt he was absolutely among the fight. He was an active soldier in battle.
He didn’t feel left out as I had perceived.

Who was I to decide whether his participation was worthy or not and to try to influence it? My intentions were not malicious and still I had wrongly observed what was actually happening…in Nash’s mind, that is.

It’s not a new concept to me, perceiving things incorrectly. Nor, unfortunately, is being wrong, though how I loathe it!

As humans we are in a constant state of perception. Something happens and then we make meaning out of it. We notice something and make a story about it. We see someone’s face and decide they must feel a certain way.

Yet, how often are we wrong? Perhaps not fully but in some way, even partially?

Even in the most intimate relationships, the long-term ones, we can perceive things incorrectly.

Ironically, intimacy can often form when someone perceives what you need or makes you feel seen without having to say or do a thing.

Except I don’t think that’s what we ought to be striving for in our relationships and life, to perceive what someone else is thinking or feeling. At least not without a healthy dose of curiosity.

I say this because I’ve been frustrated by people expecting me to be able to perceive exactly what they think or want or need without telling me. That that’s what love is. And by people applying an outdated perception to my actions now. For example, someone might think “Megan reacted negatively the last time we spoke about politics so I better avoid it as a topic from now on.” When the truth is, I reacted to something specific to that conversation and not politics as a whole. Oh, the webs we weave!

I’ve done it too in my own friendships, catching myself deciding what someone’s reaction will be before I even give them a chance to respond. Hand up, I’m guilty of this more than occasionally.

To give it a name, I’d call that action basing our perception on the past. Either theirs or your own.

That’s exactly what I did with Nash — I based my perception of him on my own past experience of feeling left out and wanting to be included.

It’s not a question of whether we should perceive or not.

For starters, should is a banned word in my vocabulary when it’s being applied to me or my actions. Secondly, there are merits in all the various ways we perceive and are perceived. We can spend life trying to eliminate one way, or deciding we must prefer one way over another. But to what end? Neither choice is a win.

Instead, I believe it’s about becoming cognisant that we are always perceiving and also noticing when we are basing our perceptions on the past rather than the present. One fixes people in place and makes assumptions. The other breeds curiosity.

The mud fight with my niblings would’ve looked to them like just that. A lot of fun. A kid getting upset and recovering. Nothing new. But what it meant to me was so much more than that.

It reminded me that sometimes I’ll get it wrong and sometimes I’ll get it right. A lesson in humility you could call it, as time spent with children inescapably always is.

More broadly, being wrong, as much as I dislike it, is always an invitation for me to connect more deeply with the people I love. It gives me the chance to experience the magic that comes when we make an attempt to repent and repair our relationships.

We can spend so much time scared of and trying to avoid arguments. Yet, fights, muddy or otherwise, are not to be feared, for in them we are afforded the opportunity to repair, build trust, and understand each other a little more.

Reality is so much richer than my imperfect perception of it.

Nash reminded me of that.

I made a mistake, a mess, in the mud. And I wouldn’t change a minute of it.

Be well, take care, and talk soon.

Megan

Physically, I have returned to Australia, yes, but I am not only revisiting familiar places and coming home to see friends and family. I feel like I’m revisiting earlier versions of me.

I'm chatting with family and spending time in places I've been countless times before. And yet I can sense the me of two years ago, of ten years ago. She’s sitting in the same passenger seat with me, but I don’t sit in her shadow. Rather, I’m slightly off it. We’re a human-shaped Venn diagram of both intersecting and distinct parts.

There’s what she would’ve done that I wouldn’t do now. There’s what I do now that she wouldn’t have done. They sound like the same thing, but they aren’t. And then there’s the overlap of what remains unchanged.

Is this why we love returning home so much? To feel that puzzle piece click of ourselves back into place? And how is it that it feels so good right now to not fall back into the same well-worn spot but to still feel the cosiness of it?

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I am penning you this letter from none other than the place I was born, my homeland. It’s not just an island but a continent. Not just the home of Raygun, kangaroos, koalas, emus and crocodiles and, as I’m so often reminded by the international contingent, some of the world’s deadliest snakes and spiders, but also home to me, although not right now residentially. It’s the land of green and gold, where thongs aren’t just underwear but footwear too. Yes, Gary, I’m penning this from the one, the only —

Australia!

The prodigal daughter has returned… though not forever. I’m here for a monthlong visit to see family and friends before I repeat the long haul flight I’ve just gotten off and go back to the land of green, the place Saint Patrick drove the snakes from years ago, the Emerald Isle. It’s not just the home of Bono and Maeve Binchy—you get where this is headed. I’m here until I head back to Ireland.

When I land back in Ireland, I’ll be weeks away from starting a Masters degree at Trinity College Dublin.

The course?

A Masters in Philosophy in Psychoanalytic Studies.

Yeah, it’s a bit of a mouthful to say, I know, but, in the most basic terms, it’s a course designed to explore the unconscious.

You might’ve heard of the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. Or perhaps you’ve made a Freudian slip yourself, accidentally saying something you don’t mean but which seems to reveal your unconscious thoughts and desires.

Personally, I prefer his contemporary Carl Jung who said things like:

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

and

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

Good stuff, right?! Imagine the following Jung would’ve had on Substack back in the day? Imagine the pen pal-ery!

I personally can’t wait to get stuck into exploring the unconscious in a deeper, structured way. The class size is capped at 15 students too, so I have this sense of us forming a close circle and sharing and learning and Jung-ing and Freud-ing it up!

Don’t worry, Gary, I won’t keep everything I learn to myself. I intend on keeping you in the loop, sharing bits and pieces along the way.

Now, if you are thinking psychoanalysis is just like psychology, you aren’t wrong. But you aren’t exactly right either and I want to make the distinction clear now. For myself as much as for you. Because they are definitely made of the same stuff, but are distinctly different in flavour and texture.

Let’s say they’re both gelato because what conversation isn’t made better with gelato?! The answer is none. Every conversation is improved with gelato.

I believe that to such a degree that I wouldn’t be surprised if the most effective strategy for psychotherapeutic clinics would be to attach gelaterias to them and offer a free scoop at the end of each session. People would be stampeding to enter! One for practitioners to consider…

As for their flavours?

This is a difficult question I’ve posed myself but one I’m also only too happy to consider. And if there were an ice cream shop here in Warwick (where I currently am in Australia) then I’d pause typing this to make what I’d call an “essential research trip”. But there isn't, so memories of my many visits to gelato parlours past will have to suffice. Let’s see…

I’m going to say psychology is more your quintessential flavours. Your Neapolitan trio of vanilla, chocolate, strawberry. Your banana, even. It’s your sorbets. Plain. Classic.

Meanwhile, psychoanalysis is your whackier blends, the mixtures, the textured chunky bits. The “I didn’t think they’d go together”. The explorative. Edgy.

Did I just inadvertently call myself edgy, Gary? I guess I did. I did spend my first ever paycheque on a leather jacket. A little bomber. Not a real one. It disintegrated years later but when I think edgy, I think leather and when I consider the kind of edgy I am, a leather that doesn’t last seems to fit. I digress.

When it comes to choosing just one flavour of each, if I had a preference, I would flavour psychology Bailey’s, which I’m calling a classic plain flavour, thank you very much, while psychoanalysis would be Ferrero Rocher. Mainly because that’s my go-to order at the moment at Grogan’s in Cashel, Co. Tipperary.

But the point is this: it’d be rare to find me not getting a scoop of each. Why? Because they are complementary. As are psychology and psychoanalysis.

In terms of their content, for that I turn to housing as a metaphor. Not as delicious as ice cream, I know, but certainly appealing to the real estate bros and capitalists.

If we consider a house, psychology looks at the house itself while psychoanalysis wants to know who built the house, what happened in its rooms, what has been locked away in that hidden cupboard, and why certain doors remain unopened.

Psychology asks questions of functionality: Is the roof leaking? Are the foundations stable? How are you using the rooms? How can we make the house function better?

Psychoanalysis asks questions of meaning: Who designed the house? Which rooms are never entered? What’s behind that locked door?

Neither ignores the other. Why? Because ~gelato~, that’s right, Gary. Complementary flavour pairings.

In terms of the house, that means that if the roof is leaking, you fix the roof! But you might also ask why the family has been living with buckets catching rain for twenty years without anyone speaking about it.

A juicy question, isn’t it, Gar?! I love a fixed roof but I’ve got to tell you I adore being preoccupied with why. With buckets catching rain. With what’s been repressed and remains unsaid.

In sum:

Psychology asks:

What happened to you?

Psychoanalysis asks:

How has your mind made meaning of what happened to you?

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As for the meaning we make, psychoanalysis explores the symbols, signals, patterns and dreams we resonate with and see and have and explores what they all mean.

One of my course modules is literally called Dreams, Dreaming and the Symbolic Life. I’ve already started writing down all my dreams so that the shareable ones can be interpreted with the class should we be invited. As for the especially strange ones, I’m keeping those to myself for private readings later…

Gary, I cannot wait to dive in!

Please take this as your invitation to send me any of your own dreams that you’re willing to be interpreted.

I’ve so much more to share with you Gary. The 24-hour trip provided me with many a tale to tell. I’m personally excited for when I write to you next and share about the woman I sat next to on my 14 hour flight from Doha, Qatar to Brisbane, Australia. Because wow, Gary. Just wow.

But, for now, my 14-month-old niece who I met for the first time face-to-face three days ago has woken from her nap and I must go to her, Gary. I must!

Be well, take care, and talk soon.

Megan

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Rocks that had been tumbled into smooth stones sat underneath me while the icy water gently tugged my arms and pushed my back, assessing the permanency of this new obstacle in its course.

Ireland was in the grip of a heatwave, as was a lot of continental Europe. We’d been hearing horror stories from France where the mercury had climbed past 40°C and people had died, not only from the heat itself but by drowning in their attempts to escape it.

As an Australian, I used to snort at the ridiculousness of a European “heatwave” — yeah, I would’ve used inverted commas in my arrogance — in which the temperature wasn’t even topping 30°C. But now I’d acclimated to my new surroundings and today’s 27°C had already driven me to sleeplessness, lethargy, and derision. The latter had transformed me from stoic Aussie to desperate survivalist with a deep need to escape the world and bunker down and out of the sun.

The late afternoon brought with it a slight reprieve, enough for me to emerge from my cave and go for a cold swim. Heal me, I begged the water.

My usual reticence to enter the arctic waters had mostly vanished, although I still adhered to a triple entry, the concept being if you submerged yourself three times, on the third entry your body would bear the chilly temperature better.

I’d found it really worked and had only just completed a triple entry and a short paddle before perching myself where I now sat, the water cascading around my arms and body and over my legs when I was struck with that thought: What am I looking at?!

A mother and daughter, at least that’s what I supposed their relationship to be based on age and the context of it being late afternoon on a school day, had been standing at the river’s edge for a few minutes now, walking into the shallows and then retreating. Perhaps they were completing their own triple entry, though I got the sense it was more about finding a spot that wasn’t too stony or fast-flowing.

In their hands, they held their shoes.

I was grateful yet again for my sister’s birthday present to me last year, a pair of neoprene swim booties with cloven feet, or as I liked to call them, cameltoes, which afforded me exceptional grip, protection from the uncomfortable edges of stones, and kept my feet warm.

One of my cloven toes was emerging from the water and I was observing it quite lovingly when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, the distinct arm waving of the child trying to right her balance and then heard the gentle splash as one of her shoes — a running shoe — slipped from her grasp and began to bob along the water.

The river was glad to have a companion to show its pace and the three of us — the mother, the child and me — all watched as the shoe started to move further and further away from them.

I waited for one of them to make a move to save the shoe. They didn’t.

The river’s general pace was fast, but where the shoe had fallen the flow was quite steady and there seemed long seconds when they could’ve reached out for it. Still, no attempt was made.

Then it bobbed to the left and caught an eddy, which was threatening to shoot it out into the main flow. While the water did quicken there, it was also shallower. Surely they will walk out now and get it, I thought.

So sure was I that I hadn’t made a move to help in the shoe’s recovery at all. And then I found myself too lost in the observation of mother and child on the river bank to do anything.

What am I looking at? I thought. Should I get up now and retrieve it? Why aren’t they asking me for help? Why aren’t they worried? Why isn’t that mother yelling at her daughter, or at least giving her a look of utter disdain? Why do I want to be heroic? Why do I feel ashamed that I haven’t been heroic?

All of these thoughts invaded my mind as the shoe — which looked devastatingly new — bobbed on happily.

If I go now, I’ll be in the deep of the river, I thought, sure they were observing the same. At least I am a strong swimmer. I could do it. Should I do it. Maybe they can’t swim? Are they not Irish and in fact Parisians desperate to escape the heat? Would it be worth attempting to retrieve the shoe and then finding out I’m not that strong of a swimmer and drowning for the cause?

There’s a previous version of me who wouldn’t have waited a moment to jump in and help. She’s younger. She’s not necessarily kinder. But she feels responsible for everyone, and by way of the familiarity of that feeling, likes to feel responsible for everyone.

I love that previous, younger version of me. I feel she is noble. I’m sure as you’re hearing this story, you’re wondering, like I was, Where is THAT girl, now?! HELP THEM!! SAVE THE SHOE!!

But, that day, in that moment, the desire to help was outweighed by the desire to observe. Not to be disconnected from them, but to connect to them in a different way. For I know how it feels to connect to people when they’re thanking you for helping them. But relating to people as you both watch as life just happens to one of you? That’s kind of new for me.

My mind ran over possible recovery configurations, mapped the topography of the other river bank, wondered how far I’d be able to walk along it, who the landowner might be, how far until the next bridge, and assessed other retrieval points. I wanted to hand over all the options my mind had come up with to the mother and her daughter. I wanted to give them something.

I also wanted them, longed for them, to release the other shoe. Because what use was it now? What good was one good shoe?

Do it, I silently encouraged. Release the shoe!

I wanted them to show me the way they could fully surrender to life. They were already blowing me out of the water with how little the loss of one shoe was affecting them. I wanted them to lead by example and say, See? Life happens, and sometimes you’ll lose a brand-new shoe. Let it happen. Surrender the shoe.

Litter and unnecessary waste are, in my opinion, abhorrent, so part of me was glad they didn’t but such a surrender would be bigger than a failure to reduce, reuse, and recycle, I reasoned.

Would they try to replace the shoe? Was it so new that they’d go back to the store and explain what had happened and pick up just one left shoe?

Was their calm acceptance just a mask because I was there and did the child understand this about her mother and know she was going to be absolutely lambasted once she was home?

Who were these people?! I wanted to know. Needed to know.

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And how was it that, although I didn’t know them, I knew we all agreed the loss of the shoe was worse because it was brand-new? And why was that the case when a worn-in shoe, something beloved, is so much more of a loss in another way?

Why are we able to let go with more ease to the old than the new? But then equally why when it comes to people we feel the heartbreak of lovers torn apart after decades together and struggle to allow others to experience the same grief if they break up with someone after a couple of weeks?

Is it the potential of things and people we value? Is it how they look? Is it that we want them to remain perfect but also long to be loved and know a well-worn love?

The irony of course being that you can only know a well-worn love by letting things get damaged and lost along the way.

So maybe it was for the best that the shoe had been lost? Its imagined potential was now gone. Indeed, the friction of loss might strengthen the relationship between mother and child. Or strengthen the child’s resolve to enter adulthood and be the kind of parent who, if her own child accidentally dropped one shoe to the river, laughs and gives her the permission to let the other shoe go.

I don’t know. I still don’t know the answers. I can see merits in every direction I look. I see merit for me intervening. I see merit for me sitting still. I see merit in the shoe being lost. In it being kept. In the mother seeming not to care. In the mother yelling. In the child watching blankly as her shoe disappeared. In the child swimming after it. In the child crying.

I can see merit in it all. Because I can see each reality. Have known them all.

The red runner was nearly out of sight now and still none of us had moved.

It was still floating, was yet to take on any water, was now nearing the curve of the river.

Then it was gone. Out of sight.

The mother and child nursed the remaining shoe and walked back up the river bank. I sat there for a little longer, my cloven feet, the water willing me to surrender to it.

I stood up and its insistence grew softer, biting at my heels.

By the time I reached the edge and stepped out, the invitation had grown silent.

But I still heard it within me: Surrender, it whispered.

I’m trying, I replied as I packed up my things and left.

Be well, take care, and talk soon.

Megan

So let me lay the scene for you.

There I was, turning up to the first day of a summer programme at a local school last July, excited to be clocking up some hours — finally! — with my newly-minted teacher registration.

It was holiday time, so of the school’s usual 130 students, only five remained.

These five children, aged between five and eight years old, required varying levels of support, so there were three of us supervising them: their main term-time teacher and two Special Needs Assistants (SNAs), one of whom was me.

Three adults to five children seems like pretty good odds, right?

I thought so too.

Up until lunchtime, the day was going fairly well. The time was taken up with a series of songs and dances, arts and crafts, and several trips to the sensory room for some safe, one-on-one stimulation.

Then, we started cycling through our lunch breaks. By "we", I mean the teacher, let's call her Mrs G, the other SNA, let's call her Rosemary, and me. The idea being that we all got a short reprieve from being ON.

It did mean risking a ratio that had tipped out of our favour as we were now two adults to five children, but it was unspoken logic that giving the children access to food and a screen would balance the scales back to our advantage.

Both Rosemary and I had cycled through our lunch breaks with ease, and oh, how sweet the glorious sound of silence in an empty break room.

Now, it was Mrs G’s turn.

In retrospect, perhaps if she’d gone first, or even second, the events that happened next would never have occurred. I guess we will never know.

Almost as soon as Mrs G left the room, the children’s interest in their food and whatever was playing on TV both waned. Rosemary and I turned to one another, and with a shared gentle nod, we acknowledged it was time. Time to get the kids outside!

I know what you’re thinking, Uh, oh, big mistake.

But the outdoor area was securely fenced (at least to a good enough degree), directly accessible from the classroom, and the Irish weather was delivering rare unimpeded sunshine, which is to say it was safe, it was dry, and there was no transport required. And that’s without considering the bounty of possibilities that being outside would afford. It was a no-brainer. The outdoor area was not the problem.

The problem was, we had a runner.

You know, one of those kids who sees the mob and wants to run the other way? Yeah, one of those. Let’s call him Ruairi (that’s pronounced Rory for the non-Irish reader).

Ruairi the Runner.

We’d been warned about him before class had even started that morning. At the time, I’d wondered if Mrs G wasn’t amplifying reality a little bit.

After all, she was covered in the scent of exhaustion and her eyes were hollowed with the haunted look of someone who might read a story about child murder or neglect and go, “I get it”. Exaggerating the behaviour of her students was likely a coping strategy, I reasoned.

But, in the hours up to lunch, I had seen for myself there was no hint of exaggeration in her warning. That did not mean my sniff and sight tests of Mrs G weren’t accurate. Time had also proven that to me.

She needed a break. Desperately.

She was at that stage of teaching when she almost wanted the children to misbehave.

She knew this craving didn’t make any sense, I’m sure, and yet she could not bear the room reaching a level of calm. Instead, in the moments where I felt things had finally settled, I’d watch as Mrs G dangled the lure of the kids’ worst triggers in front of them and when they’d take the bait, she’d immediately pull back on her line and yell for either Rosemary or me to retrieve the Principal.

See?! Her face seemed to wordlessly plead. SEE what I have to deal with?!!!

Judgments sprang to mind as I watched this sick little game of Mrs G’s play out, and I felt both powerless to intercede and superior in the tolerance and patience my newness to this profession afforded me.

But, upon reflection, and particularly after what was to come next, I could only have compassion for everyone in that classroom.

Everyone deserved better.

Mrs G clearly needed a break away from it all, but all she could take at that moment was a short lunch break. A lunch break that was swiftly interrupted when I raced in to breathlessly tell her I’d locked the children out of the classroom.

You can imagine how thrilled she was. Utterly, completely, wholeheartedly thrilled.

As I say, we had a runner.

Ruairi.

A six-year-old whose reputation preceded him and who was living up to every speedy second of it as he repeatedly bolted from the schoolyard back into the classroom in the hopes of reaching his favourite place, Mrs G’s desk drawers.

Rosemary had taken the lead with Ruairi, fetching him time and again while I busied myself entertaining and distracting the other kids.

Of course, I’d noticed the pattern of Ruairi running inside and Rosemary retrieving him. I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t just close the door between the classroom and the yard.

But then I figured it must just be Rosemary being Rosemary.

She was a warm, kind woman, — Rosemary — who could easily relate to me and Mrs G. She could clean up a spill faster than either of us, and she often lost herself in the arts and crafts station, at times infuriatingly forgetting she was meant to be assisting rather than creating her own paper-plate toucan.

She was also an adult who spoke to children standing hinged at the hips, hands on her knees, talking slowly and loudly.

It made sense to me that Rosemary would want to keep the portal to her salvation, the door through which Mrs G would return, open.

So when she and I swapped positions and Ruairi made a run for inside yet again, rather than let this tiresome pattern continue, I simply kicked the doorstop out and watched the door close before he reached it.

Never have I felt so athletic. I’d beaten Roadrunner Ruairi.

I was enjoying my newfound sportiness annihilating some of the kids on the basketball court when Rosemary returned and asked me in a panicked voice, “Who closed the door?!”

My first thought was, I’m not proud to admit, “Say it was Ruairi.” Yeah, blame it on the defenceless kid with extra needs. Nice one, Megan.

There I’d been, judging Rosemary for getting caught up in the kids’ arts and crafts and yet now here I was getting caught up in the childish act of a blame game.

Oh, what I would’ve done to return to that recent moment when I had felt like an Olympic athlete!

“I did,” I eventually said, having remembered there were security cameras mounted around the yard and realising my lie would be ineffective. And morally wrong, sure. “Why, what’s wrong with that?”

“The door to the rest of the school is locked!!” Rosemary said. “We can’t get back inside!!!”

“Ohhhh….” I said, as it dawned on me what I had done.

When I closed the door, I knew that we couldn’t open it from the outside. But I had assumed the other classroom door, the one that led into the main school building and the break room was unlocked.

All day we’d been taking turns closing the latch of the classroom door whenever anyone went to the sensory room or to get the Principal. And even though we’d latched the door more times than not, I’d assumed Rosemary had unlocked it when we went outside. Hadn’t I seen her walking in that direction?

The image of the classroom, finally an impenetrable fortress, the very thing we’d been desperate to make it all day, entered my mind and I felt a strange peace.

A peace that quickly evaporated as I realised it was up to me to alert Mrs G and the Principal about the situation. I’d need to ask them to save us. On my first day. Oh, brother!

Alerting them wasn’t too difficult. The fence of the schoolyard was limp on one side and I was able to climb over it with ease. As soon as I was over, it was simply a matter of running as fast as Ruairi around the building and into first, the break room to retrieve a horrified Mrs G, and then to the Principal’s office, where I was greeted with much gentleness and reassurance.

“Oh, that’s okay,” the Principal said, slowly and softly. “The classroom next door actually has a concertina door into that classroom. We just need to find the key for that and you’ll be back in there in no time.”

I started to celebrate how easily this problem could be fixed. Unfortunately, my inner celebration was interrupted by the ferocity with which the Principal was opening drawers and the not-so-softly spoken mutterings he was now making. It appeared the problem was not to be so readily resolved.

“Where is that key?!” The Principal demanded.

With hope deflated, I turned to look out the windows and couldn’t believe how cruel the Irish weather was being to me today. Where were the clouds, some gentle misting rain to ensure the five children did not overheat and die, trapped as they were outside?!

Images of news headlines — “Australian teacher responsible for death of five autistic children” — flashed before my eyes.

As did an imagined conversation later that day with the Principal in this very office, “We’re going to have to let you go, Megan”.

No, I thought as I kept looking at the sky. No. That was not how I’d let this story end.

I brought my gaze back into the room where I could suddenly see the Principal and Mrs G clearly. They were spinning out and had no clue what to do, too exhausted to come up with a solution.

But I had an idea.

“I’m going to break the door down,” I told them.

Neither of them argued with me or told me I was ridiculous. They just silently followed me to the latched classroom door.

I took one deep breath in and out and then, with my next breath in, I drove my shoulder into the door. I was surprised to find it bulge, revealing a semi-sphere of classroom. I could actually do this, I realised, and I barged into the door again, this time with a little more force.

It popped more than burst open, and yet, it still felt extraordinarily cinematic.

There was Mrs G, pushing past me to open the other door to the outside play area, the children crowding her while, like a mother hen, she fluffed her wings and squatted to embrace them all. For what we loathe, we usually also love.

There was Rosemary, watching on for a second with a wide smile before beginning to restore order to the outdoor area, desperate for a return inside.

There was the Principal, nodding at me and retreating to his office.

And there was I, rubbing my shoulder, feeling conflicted.

Part of me wanted to be punished and have my teacher registration revoked. Part of me wanted a hearty “Thank you, Megan. You’re incredible!” from anyone for solving the problem. And part of me was hella impressed that I’d broken the door open but not broken the latch. We could keep using it to ensure the children’s safety. Hallelujah!

But, all of those parts had to wait as the part of me that was acting as an SNA that day was needed. Mrs G had recovered herself and was already back to pushing the children away, reentering the toxic dynamic of the morning.

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An hour or so later, I was in the sensory room with one child when Mrs G entered and dropped off three more children and asked if I could keep them there while — her eyes told me — she sorted something out.

I figured there must’ve been a major meltdown happening and had visions of Mrs G, Rosemary and the Principal trying to tranquillise the child with their words as the kid tore down the classroom. I didn’t really take notice of which child wasn’t there. I just did my head count and invited the kids into the game I’d already been playing.

If I had realised it was Ruairi the Runner who was missing, I might’ve supposed something else.

Really, I was just thrilled to have been entrusted with the children on my own.

When Mrs G eventually returned, she told me what had happened.

She’d left the classroom, probably to get the Principal, I thought, though she didn’t say, and hadn’t asked Rosemary to lock the door behind her, though she delivered it as, “and Rosemary (eye roll) didn’t lock the door.”

It turned out I wasn’t the only adult susceptible to the blame game.

Rosemary hadn’t noticed Ruairi run out, Mrs G told me, and I nodded, knowing dear Rosemary had probably been lost in a papier-mâché project when he’d seen his opportunity and run.

She’d dropped the kids to me when Rosemary returned from a run through the school and couldn’t find Ruairi.

Apparently, they found him in a field beside the school, dancing on the spot looking up at something they couldn’t see in the sky.

And while I didn’t actually see Ruairi standing there in that field, finally free of everyone’s attempts to manage him and his environment, I can see him so clearly in my mind, even now.

The fear that had driven all of our behaviours all day had been realised.

The thing we’d been most scared of?

A young boy dancing, free.

Be well, take care, and talk soon.

Megan

But, once in a while, it happens.

We believe in the order of time and the rules of the calendar, and yet, neither can be completely tamed. Life cannot be contained.

For those who find comfort in control, maybe that’s a terrifying thought.

Or, perhaps not.

For, while I’d number myself among the other self-confessed control freaks, I find there to be an immensely comforting quality to the universe’s contrariness and the infinite nature of all things.

How contrary of me. Ha!

After all, you will not find synchronicities if you demand order, and your contrariness will drive you mad if you seek to flatten your existence into unnatural consistency.

The calendar accepts its contradictory, magnificent, inconsistent self, so why wouldn’t we? Why don’t we?

On this fifth Monday, I’ve decided to celebrate June’s once-in-a-blue-moon attitude by revealing some of my many, many, contradictions.

To take the calendar’s lead and own that I too am comprised of incongruity.

As, I’m afraid, are you.

As we all are.

This is a special, once in a fifth Monday post and is for paid subscribers only. If you’ve been considering taking out a paid subscription, you can do so for $5/month or $30/year (prices are in Australian dollars). I am so grateful for every subscription — paid or free. Your support of my writing means so much to me. Truly, madly, deeply. Thank you.

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Oh, so contradictory

I believe being consistent is a noble characteristic and also one that is entirely aspirational in nature.

At least in the way we view consistency in the modern world — showing up at the exact same time with the exact same energy day in, day out.

Ideally, I’d love to tell you that on Thursdays from 5pm to 6pm, I will be completing the exact same exercise routine and that on Mondays I eat chicken-cauliflower soup. I’d love to show up for every run or swim and complete the same Iron(wo)Man distance every time.

But I can’t, I don’t, and I won’t.

Life doesn’t work that way, and it certainly doesn’t demand that we do either.

Society might, but not life.

Life ebbs and flows. We inhale and we exhale. Our life is literally given to us by a contradiction.

An inhale and an exhale: talk about opposites attracting!

If we strip the concept of consistency back to breathing, every breath you take, every move you make, I’ll be watching you, and when I do, I know what I’ll see is an inhale that’s different from the last and will be different to the next.

That’s why I believe a definition of consistency built on the premise of exactitude and equality is aspirational only.

And let’s not forget the calendar’s influence here. Five Mondays? Consistency is not meant to be an exact science.

Now, I’m not saying I’m a naysayer or a conspiracy theorist who questions whether consistency exists at all. Not at all.

Because while I can’t promise that I’ll show up with the exact same energy every day, what I can assure you of is that each morning you’ll find me on my yoga mat. I can’t promise I’ll be flowing through vinyasas every day, but I’ll be there. That’s the only consistency I’m asking of me right now.

Right now.

I want to emphasise that phrase as my current morning routine is me showing up on my yoga mat, but I’m not beholden to that. I know that feels great RIGHT NOW but that may also, nay, will change over time and that’s okay.

We are allowed to change. We don’t have to sign up to routines for life. We can try them on for a season, a reason, but not necessarily a lifetime.

Okay, so brushing my teeth and showering are consistent routines I’ve almost subscribed to daily for eternity, but I’ve even been known to stretch those. Gross, maybe, but I like to think of it as exercising my free will. Let’s see what my dentist has to say about it when I see them in a few weeks…

I’m now uncomfortable with you, dear reader, thinking I might not brush my teeth regularly. I assure you I do and am also conscious that I can’t be too emphatic lest I sound super defensive…

What I will say is there have been two nights since I was 18 that I remember not brushing my teeth: once at my cousin’s 18th and my teeth the next day were a furry mess (thanks, alcohol) and the second was the night I’d fallen asleep on my couch and when I woke, I only had enough energy to get to my bed. Or, so I told myself. And I’m okay with that.

There you go, all the sordid details now out in the open. My dental confessions. Let’s hope there’s not a Part II but, look, there probably will be.

Because that’s the nature of all things.

Not to be consistent, but contrarian.

I believe this so strongly that it’s difficult for me to imagine me changing my mind on this point of view. And yet, I know to never say never.

A woman here in Ireland reminded me of that recently.

I chat to her almost exclusively in our local café, the two of us bonding over books. You’re probably thinking how Dua Lipa-Callum Turner of you, but before you get carried away, she calls me Tegan, so we’re not really on the same page.

“Hey Tegan,” she says with such certainty, and then blazes into conversation with such ferocity, that the moment to correct her passes and then I don’t think about it again until she says, “See ya, Tegan” over her shoulder leaving. Sigh. But honestly it sounds closer to Me-gan than the majority who call me Meg-an here, so that’s something.

Anyway, this woman was talking to me about how she worked in the field of psychology.

“I used to have such an open mind,” she said. “But, over the past decade, that’s changed and I feel myself getting narrower and narrower about things.”

She was so self-aware and vulnerable in that moment, I thought. It felt very true.

Which is to say that even my views probably won’t be consistent over my lifetime.

The beliefs I hold dear now are certainly not the same as the beliefs I held 10, 20, or even 30 years ago, if 4-year-olds are allowed to have beliefs, and I believe they are. I certainly believed broccoli to be unworthy of being eaten at that age. Try telling 4-year-old me that “Broccoli sucks” was not a belief!

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Alright, we’ve ducked, we’ve weaved, we’ve manoeuvred about and around this concept of consistency being a fallacy and contrariness being the default, the way life actually operates.

I hope it brings you some peace. That you can give yourself a reprieve when you show up tomorrow or next week and don’t feel as great as you did today or three months or three years ago.

The calendar can’t be contained. She’s as contrary as Mary, which I wish was the name of my Tegan-calling friend from the café for narrative neatness, but I can’t have everything.

What I can and do have aplenty of though — I’ve got who’s-its and what’s-its galore, you want thingamabombs? I got twenty — is contradictions.

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But then I got so excited with all of my IDEAS for this newsletter and so I hijacked the series, substituting quick-read declarations for longform essays. I’ve been known to do it. I stand by what I had to say in those essays, and there were definite reminders within them, but they were not what I had envisioned for this series.

So, this month, I am a year older and wiser, and it’s third time lucky for A Constant Reminder. Let’s try out the format I’d always planned for you.

We begin with something I need to be constantly reminded about because I am always forgetting the truth of it, and that is this: There is time.

There is time. No, there really is. Everything has its own time to bloom. You could force it, or you could flow and see what happens, see what feels more fun? Flow might be uncomfortable to begin with as it’s likely new, but I’ve found it wayyyy more fun…though I’m prone to forgetting that too.

Because the thing is you are actually here to experience life rather than control it.

Yeah, I know, you don’t believe me. I can almost hear a chorus of variations on, “You want me to experience chaos?! If I don’t control my day, if I don’t have systems in place, my whole family, my whole career, my whole life will crumble and die, or go up in flames.”

I don’t wish chaos on you, but I would love for you to discover whether you are right in your assumptions and whether it would be absolute anarchy if you let go of your grip. Just a bit. I’m not asking you to go from all to nothing. Just a friendly reminder you don’t have to hold all of it.

You don’t have to hold all of it.

You don’t.

You’re doing so well. I see you holding it together. Minimising your needs. Diminishing what you do. But you don’t need to.

You are allowed to take up space.

Yes, it’s true. You can stretch and reach and TAKE. UP. SPACE.

Please. Try it. Even if all you can bear right now is attempting to take up some more physical space. One of my favourite yoga poses is Utthita Tadasana, or Star Pose. Hands out, goal post arms, shoulder blades together as you let your chest open and spread your fingers. Feet wide and heavy, your inner thighs working. Energy moving up through your front body and down through your back body. Breathe.

For the extra courageous, can you take up space by filling your glass up first — and I’m just talking literally here, not metaphorically. Can you pour your drink first? Or, perhaps you could try serving your dinner before anyone else’s, or by cutting across Jason on your Zoom call when he cuts you off for the eleventeenth time and saying, “Actually, Jason, what I was saying…”

Because you are allowed to take up space. You are.

You don’t have to be understood by everyone. You don’t have to be palatable. You don’t have to be so polite. You don’t have to be perfect.

You’re allowed to be silly. You’re allowed to be weird. You’re allowed to be a freak. Of course, it’s actually encouraged here at Match My Freq HQ.

We’re all freaks, after all. Some are just better at showing it off.

People delight in your weirdness, your quirks. They love you when you show up as you rather than the version you think they will like. No, truly, we do. We know you so well and know when you are faking it. We want real you, even when that means you might take up space and we might have to accommodate you.

Okay, so maybe some people will prefer the polite, quiet, punctual, efficient, optimised you. Okay, maybe a lot of people. Because it’s convenient for them.

But guess what?

You are allowed to be inconvenient. You are allowed to be an inconvenience.

You are allowed to have desires. You are allowed to not only need but want.

What do you want? Can you answer that, or have you forgotten what it is, and just know the answer is “Not this”?

That’s great. That is an answer. That is a start.

Because if your answer is as wide as “it’s not this”, it means the answer can be equally expansive. You now have limitless possibilities to change just one thing up. You don’t have to turn to its opposite. What if you simply tried dialling down THIS by a few degrees to a different frequency, a different vibration?

You are allowed to want different. You are allowed to move differently to others.

Your pace does not need to match others.

And, you are allowed to change your mind. If you change your frequency today by a few degrees, you are not beholden to it forever. We are all changing over and over again.

You are like the moon. You are cycles. One day you are full and before you know it you’ve moved from a crescent, a quarter, and now you are a new moon. And soon you will be a full moon again, but never the same. For now you are in a different constellation.

You are like spring. Everything, always changing. One day the daffodils arrive, the next it’s the cherry blossoms. They don’t stay, no, no, they make way. So the dandelions and daisies and rhododendrons and poppies and cow’s parsley can have their turn. You are each flower, taking its turn. You are in constant bloom and decay. You don’t have to apologise. Change is okay. In fact, it’s beautiful. It’s the rhythm of nature.

You are loveable. You are loved. Just as you are. With all your foibles and freakishness. When you are charmless. When you say the wrong thing. When you are inconsiderate. Yeah, even then, you are loveable and loved.

By who? By many, but let’s start with YOU.

You are allowed to love you.

You are allowed to feel squeamish reading that, thinking it, trying to believe it. But it’s true.

You love you.

You just might have forgotten that it’s true.

Yes, I know, you’ve forgotten so much. Me too. That’s okay. It is. We are allowed to forget. We are meant to, so we can get on with living and making memories and learning and loving and practicing what we forgot.

So we can remember.

There’s nothing like a homecoming and forgetting lets you remember. It allows you to come home to yourself.

Your life doesn’t need a rewrite. No. It doesn’t.

Everything that ever happened has led you here to you. Right now. It’s taught you so much. It’s hurt, sure. There’ve been tragedies, I know, I am so sorry. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be nice to edit the script a bit…but that’s foolish because then we wouldn’t have this moment.

This one right here between us. With me remembering all the things I’ve forgotten too. With me right here alongside you.

Let me prove it to you. I had every single post of mine open and I planned to make sure I captured every truth I wanted us to remember that I’ve currently posted. But then I just started remembering things and the typing went on and on and I loved the flow but also I thought, “Oh no. This won’t be perfect. This won’t be what I expected.”

And then I remembered I love the unexpected. And instead of trawling through posts, forcing a copy and paste perfect job, I’ve flowed.

And I like what I’ve written. Dare I say, I love it.

Yes, I think I will dare because I just remembered I’m allowed to take up space and I’m allowed to love weird, inconvenient, loveable me.

Be well, take care, and talk soon.

Megan

Sit with the idea for a second with me. Your life — the accumulation of all your choices, every decision you’ve made, all the things that have happened to you, all the things you have done — does not need to be rewritten. They do not require amendments.

How does that feel in your body? Uncomfortable, right?

Of course it is. We aren’t used to giving ourselves permission to be exactly as we are and where we are right now. Instead, we are encouraged to buy more and be more. More, more, always more. We seem wired to remember every blemish, every misstep, every regret, and, worse, the realities of when we were less.

Oh boy, the realities, the memories, of the times I was less? They are some of my private cinema’s most watched films. My private cinema being the in-built, at-home 4K high-def screen that is the back of my eyes.

The rerun rate of my most lacking moments might be the reason I believe the great masters who claim one of our greatest challenges is accepting the present moment i.e. accepting our lives as they truly exist, right now. We might come to terms with our lives — over time and begrudgingly — but accepting things as they are in the moment they are happening? Phew, that’s some Eckhart Tolle, enlightened business right there.

Experience has also taught me, shown me, quite often painfully and at expense to my own dignity, another belief: that my best moments — the ones that I can accept easily as they are, and replay for the good vibes and not in some revisionist theatre — won’t arrive the way I expected them.

In fact, my best moments actually weren’t those times when my life made sense and looked ‘right’ in the eyes of others. Sure, they were some of my most successful moments and moments when I felt a surface-level belonging that is frankly addictive but, more often than not, they weren’t my best. I might not have needed to rewrite them because they looked ‘good’ in the eyes of others, but they weren’t deserving a spot in my Best Of showreel.

Rather, my best moments have nearly always arrived with a little nervous excitement alongside them, that hesitation and shock when you dip your toe in the cold ocean and at once can’t wait to submerge yourself fully and also consider retreating to the comfort of the warm sand. And the ones that didn’t arrive with that were because they were expressions of giving or receiving pure love. Heady stuff.

The image I see when I consciously think of what it feels like in my best moments is me as an intrepid explorer, standing on a rocky outcrop not dissimilar to the one in Pocahontas, one hand on my hip and the other holding my luggage, which is being carried on a stick like in Blinky Bill. It’s very young Hercules energy in the song I Can Go The Distance. And yes the feeling is filled with a lot of imagery from my childhood, which I’ve just now decided to psychoanalyse and the early theory is that it’s because, in my best moments, I am meeting the real me, the me I most easily could access as a child.

I want to add that accepting this is it and feeling it is enough, that your life as it stands is enough, that you are enough, is brave and strange and can feel a little lonely. That’s why it’s difficult to clock up those best moments.

It’s so much easier to spend the majority of our lives making decisions we hope others will be happy with and praise us for rather than choosing what drives us forward, what we believe in, and even discovering what our beliefs are.

I hope there is resonance in what I’ve said so far, but actually it’s all a bit irrelevant for what I want to say next — your life does not need a rewrite.

You don’t have to apologise for the times you chose something that others disagreed with. Equally, you don’t have to apologise for the times you chose something that others cheered you on about but didn’t feel fully true for you.

I’m talking to the people holding onto the script of their life with apology. To those who walk around with a red pen, scribbling notes in the margins of their lives.

Sure, I’ll give it to you, it’d be nice to live life through and then live it again, this time perfectly. You wouldn’t falter or hesitate. You’d be more confident, you’d take that risk, you’d be both more beloved and loveable.

Depending on your rewrite, you’d live life perfectly in alignment for you, or you’d do things better so no one could question you.

Unfortunately, that’s not possible.

And yet, so many of us are nursing past pains as if we could change them. We carry around our mistakes as heavy sacks on our backs, ammunition we’d either: willingly offer to others to use against us just to give our shoulders a moment of reprieve, or hold onto with all our might in the hopes no one will ever see them.

We wish we could’ve written it differently and, because we couldn’t, we believe we now must be adequately reprimanded and punished for them for all eternity. Either publicly or privately. We might be conscious of this, or perhaps we aren’t.

The thing is, all of us, every single one of us, carries hidden shame about the way something did or didn’t go, words that were or weren’t said. We wrongly believe we are alone in our desire to edit and trim our life’s blooper reel that, as far as blooper reels go, wasn’t very funny.

Our gravest mistake as humans is believing we must exist above errors, outside of discomfort, that our lives should either align with a digestible narrative arc or they should live outside of the conventions of story, which, by its very nature, demands complication and mess.

I have definitely spent many hours playing out old scenes and rewriting them how I would’ve preferred they’d gone. My revisions are quite sophisticated, if I do say so myself, in that they don’t just involve editing that which has happened, but also editing when certain things happened.

For example, when I learned how to be that intrepid explorer and to live a story I was proud of, one of the first thoughts wasn’t an excited “How cool is this?!” but a lamentation of “Why didn’t I understand this sooner?!” Talk about high energy...

So, what’s the solution? Well, to get out my red pen, of course, and while away hours imagining what life I could’ve lived if I had known sooner.

May we have a minute’s silence for all the lost opportunities we had to apply lessons learned and wisdoms earned in the now-dead past. RIP.

I know it mightn’t have sounded like it at the start when I was talking about my best moments, but I’m right here in the trenches beside everyone. And, as I write, I feel shame’s old tug saying, “Shut up, you’re being too revealing” and start to wonder, Maybe this post needs a literal rewrite. Oh, brother!

That’s life’s nature. Everything is cyclical and we live in a spiral, where we will return to the same spot over and over, but each time we do, we will be a little higher. And we can recognise the spot and move on faster. Sometimes. Sometimes it takes longer. But what we are doing each time is remembering.

We need to be reminded. Over and over and, exhaustingly, I know, over again.

And that’s what I’m trying to do and intend to keep doing here. For me and for my fellow Freqs / freaks. To remind you, yes, you, that your life does not need a rewrite.

This is a topic I will return to over and over and, I can only hope, pleasingly, over again. With stories of things I wish I could rewrite in my life. Let’s make it a series! We’ll put a scene I’ve longed to rewrite under the lens and see if it was worth the scribbled mess rather than the neat and tidy red pen.

Why not start right now?

Look, I’ll admit this first entry is quite low stakes, a story in which the only affected party is me, and while there was embarrassment that made me go “Ohh, Megan, if only you’d known!” it hasn’t haunted me greatly. But I believe we all deserve a little humour after the heaviness and vulnerability above.

Here we go…

Ferry is a destination

There I was, two group tours of Ireland and Scotland as a solo traveller done, collecting the keys to my hire car to drive alone, completely alone, from Glasgow back to London, taking in Wales along the way.

The year was 2013, which doesn’t sound like the too-distant past, but it was a time before eSims and in-built navigation systems in cars. I’ll start a new paragraph while you gasp.

I had opted out of the add-on GPS that the car rental company recommended because I was 21 and knowing where I was going was an extravagance I could not afford and did not believe I needed.

Instead, as I navigated the picturesque countryside of Scotland and then Wales and then England, back-up screenshots of Google Maps sat at the ready in my camera roll on my phone should I need them.

As always, I was behind schedule.

Having grown up in North Queensland, I was used to distances being conquered at consistently high speeds. It was news to me that the distances might be shorter in the UK and they might’ve had fantastic motorways, but on the scenic route, which is what I was travelling on, the roads were more narrow and windy and required a lower speed and thus, as those of us who have studied physics (or have common sense) know, the same distance took a much longer time to travel.

Still, I was feeling so content with life out there on the road, discovering places, being swept up in the magic of novelty. The road signs were like surprising canvases of art, such was their difference to those back home. Speed itself was signposted in miles per hour rather than kilometres. Distance was similarly displayed in the imperial measurement. Time, of course, was measured the same, but took on an elongated quality.

I passed another road sign and was gripped by it for a new reason. This sign said that my destination was at least 20 miles closer if I went via Ferry. By my math, that would significantly reduce my travel time. And how cute did Ferry sound as a town?!

Ferry was capitalised so not for one moment did I consider the sign was suggesting a ferry, a boat, taking not a road but crossing a lake to get there. Nor did it occur to me that it was impossible to get to my destination without going around the perimeter of the lake. Even though I was in the Lakes District.

All I could envision was thatched roofs and village people who adored their town’s name and adorned their streets in both fairy and ferry paraphernalia.

I stand by the sign being to blame. Who capitalises F for ferry and who doesn’t add a helpful boat symbol?! Honestly, the English!

It wasn’t until the road to Ferry that I was on went from being paved to unpaved to leading me to the water’s edge that I realised what had happened and that Ferry was not some quaint town but was, right at this very moment, docking in front of me. And was, in fact, the very last ferry of the day.

I did not have time in the moment to curse myself or the British capitalisation of nouns that are not proper nouns. All I could do was either drive forward onto the ferry, or reverse along the lake’s edge and go back the way I’d come.

So, for a couple of pounds, I paid the man and boarded. It would’ve been ironic if the cost of the ferry was equivalent to the GPS hire option, but I’m glad to say it wasn’t.

From memory, I was the only car on that ferry, though perhaps I’m remembering it wrongly. What I do recall is that the deckhand / fee collector had a daughter about to study journalism and as I was in the middle of my course, we talked about that.

“You must be a smart cookie,” he said to me, and I lowered my face in what probably looked like humility but was, in fact, embarrassment.

I told him how I’d thought Ferry was a town because I’m the kind of person who carries her shame and offers it to others for total obliteration of self.

Thankfully, he was the kind of man who chooses to ignore a woman’s flaws and clings to the perfect image he has quickly concocted in his mind. Who was I to change him?

After all, the ferry ride was over, seven minutes after it had begun.

I drove away shuddering at the varying degrees of ineptitude and lack of common sense this trip via Ferry had clearly revealed was alive and thriving within me.

There’s a version of me who would’ve rewritten this story. She would’ve had me arriving early, or at the very least on schedule. She would’ve ignored the sign for Ferry and arrived in time to explore Beatrix Potter’s home. And as my rewrites usually go, she would’ve also had more financial resources to not bat an eyelid at the cost of adding on a GPS. She wouldn’t be travelling solo but with a guy in finance, 6’5”, blue eyes. She wouldn’t even be driving but being driven…

Can you see how the rewrite once begun can be hard to stop, and soon your life as it is or was becomes difficult to distinguish?

Meanwhile, as I recounted this story and wrote it down, I laughed at myself for the sweet innocence of me, the getting swept up in the whimsy of Ferry, the stop-starts, the lateness, all of it.

I remember the magic of the ferry literally turning up as I drove towards it, as if I had intended to go via ferry the entire time. As if I’d looked up that day’s sailings and was right on schedule.

Because, guess what, I was. That was always how it was meant to be.

And if I changed any of it, I would have one less story to share. And telling stories is kind of the thing I love. So where would I be without ferry, capital or not?

This is the beauty of voicing the rewrites you’ve painstakingly kept with you, of removing the secrecy, of sharing what was once silent. You realise the beauty or at least humour in your mistakes. You realise the things you want to rewrite are the very things that connect you to people. They create compassion. They unite.

Imagine how bland a life you would have without the bits you’d like to erase? However big or small, we’ve got them all.

And unfortunately writing this will not absolve me of still involuntarily cringing in memory of something, or marking up the script and changing dialogue after a conversation with someone. It’s the curse of the age of optimisation.

But what it has done is reminded me of how the best stories are always a little messy.

So here’s to burning the book you’ve written with all the mistakes removed, all the heinous parts of you scrubbed, and all the silly things said scratched from the record.

Your life is a much more interesting read the way it is. I hope you might grow to believe that.

Even if it’s just for a chapter.

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Be well, take care, and talk soon.

Megan

What’s been up with me? Oh, you know, just turning 34 on Thursday last week.

Thank you, yes, I appreciate your birthday wishes. It was a lovely day.

I have always loved my birthday. Some may say because it’s all about me and I love to be at the centre of things, and I’m sure that’s part of it, or at least was when I was a child (or, rather, when I was younger in age). I also love surprises, so getting presents was always a big, exciting deal.

These days I still love my birthday, but less so because of the thrill of unwrapping presents — this year, my favourite presents came either unwrapped or were hand-made: two friends each wrote me a poem and I cherish them as much as the beaded bracelet and scrunchie my nieces made me — and more as a time to reflect and connect.

To reflect on who I am now and who I hope to become. And to connect with those who I’m so grateful to have in my life, and who gave me life in the case of my parents and grandparents.

As I spent the day reflecting and connecting, three main takeaways about the ritual of birthdays and ageing came up for me, and as I sat to pen you this letter, it occurred to me that perhaps I could share them with you. In the hope they, or at least one of them, resonate and can be packaged up as a gift from me to you on your next birthday, Gary*.

1. Ageing: (a) the seriousness of it, and (b) the blandness of certain ages.

In the lead-up to my birthday, Gary, I have to say I had some resistance to turning 34.

Not in the sense of fearing my own mortality or ageing, although I am still shocked to find I’m not still 24. What do you mean I’m *nearly* in my mid-30s?! Okay, so there may be some age denial happening…

Most of that age disbelief though is because I still feel such youthfulness and playfulness, and I guess growing up I assumed I’d attain a certain age and become serious. I’d be less vivacious, a bit more boring. But that hasn’t happened yet, Gary. If anything, I feel brighter than ever before.

Age denial and disbelief have partnered with me on many past birthdays and I didn’t resist those ages one bit. So why now, leaving 33?

I know that I had been looking forward to 33 since I was about 28 or 29. I can’t say why, really. I just felt it was going to be a great age. And, it was! I loved being 33. The double numbers, sure, but it was also that the energy — the frequency — felt like it held such promise. That it was going to be good, and by good I mean transformative.

Multiple friends pointed out to me 33 was also the year Jesus died and was resurrected, so, while I may classify my religion under spirituality rather than Christianity, I still felt the magic of the Son upon me. He transformed at 33 and so too, I felt, would I.

In terms of my transformation, it was a little less supernatural than coming back to life after a grisly crucifixion, and a little less known / spoken about. People won’t be talking about the year Megan turned 33 in two years’ time let alone 2,000 years’ time.

Nevertheless, it was special for me. In ways that might not be visible and so may sound a bit too deep. All you need to know for now is, until the day before my birthday on Thursday, it’s a year I would’ve put on repeat.

But with a little reflective time and space, what I came to was that 33 was great mainly because of how much I’d anticipated it. Like a holiday or gals’ / lads’ trip that you’ve had planned for ages and the lead up to it is almost as good as the vacation itself. As for 34, I hadn’t given it any thought. I just didn’t want the trip to end. Yet here it was, a new age, a new shore, calling me forth. Beckoning.

As the reality loomed, I realised turning 34 had the same distinctive energy I felt when I was turning 20. Twenty? I recall thinking. How boring. Nineteen, yes, let’s soak up the last of our teens, be the elder of all teenagers, if you will. And on the other side was twenty-one, which I knew was going to be so much fun. Milestone birthday, party time, let’s go!

As for 20, it seemed so bland and boring and beige.

It got me thinking if this might be true throughout life. Are there just ages, Gary, that look and sound a little bland? I think there might be and I’ve decided to bestow upon myself the authority to determine what those ages are over each decade of life from 0-100.

Here they are, listed without explanation but, trust me, there’s been a lot of feeling put into this and I will defend my choices in a court of law should I be called upon to do so:

The age(s) of beige

7 // 14 // 20 // 37 (I know you were expecting 34, and me too, but I’m three days in and loving here. The blandness was temporary, but at age 37? I don’t think it’ll be that way) // 42 // 57 (I think I might have a set against the number 7) // 61 // 76 (or, maybe not, otherwise why wouldn’t I choose 77?) // 83 // 91.

Now I know that just before I listed the ages, I came in pretty strong with declarations of war (court) for anyone who dared to disagree with me, but I am ready and willing to be proven wrong. Imagine getting to 91 and feeling “Well, nothing to be excited about now until I turn 92.” You’re in your nineties — you’ve already won!

As these first days of 34 have already shown me, perhaps there’s beauty waiting in the years entered without any expectancy. I promise to report back next year, Gary. And as I age (hopefully) through the beige.

2. Birthday calls are not for your actual birthday

This has become my newest mantra and it came to me on my birthday when the clock struck 2pm in the afternoon and I hung up the last call of the day after having been on back-to-back calls since waking up that morning.

I cannot argue that it is a privileged problem to have so many people reaching out and to be speaking with so many loved ones. But I can argue that a birthday is a time to celebrate and I’d have loved instead to have filled it up with an activity to add to the old memory bank.

Now, this is fully on me. I made no plans for my birthday this year unlike last year (see, point 1 about anticipation vs apathy for 33 vs 34). And I’m a yapper. My yap levels are not going to change, but I feel sure now that my lack of plans was by design so I would have this realisation once again (this ain’t my first birthday of back-to-back calls) and implement the wisdom next year.

I actually inadvertently tested out the new model this year with a call from one of my closest friends back home in Australia two nights before my birthday. She was up at 4am to drive to a job two hours away for her work. Between the time difference and my penchant for a yarn, it was the ideal time and length to talk. Then, on my actual birthday, there was no need for a call. Instead, she sent me a short video of the Australian sun rising on my 34th birthday (so sweet, and the kind of gesture I love) and a short voice memo to say Happy Birthday.

That’s the way I’m doing it next year. I’ll be making calls to all my nearest and dearest for a deep dive into our lives and then on my birthday, a quick Happy Birthday message, a sunrise photo or three, a poem penned — please — and I’ll be happy.

Of course, exceptions will be permitted for my immediate family as my siblings muster up my niblings to sing Happy Birthday to their auntie queen, and parents and my Jaycee (the name we use for my grandmother) must have the chance to directly acknowledge the day the mix of their genetics (me) came crying into the world.

Them’s the new rules, Gary.

3. My birthday letters to me are supreme and I wish everyone wrote their own

When I turned 28, I got the notion to write my 29-year-old self a letter from me making predictions for what would happen in our life over the coming 12 months.

I also wrote a letter to 30-year-old me, from me at age 28, predicting where I’d be at the milestone age of 30.

It’s a bit of whimsy that I’ve never once regretted implementing.

Sure, it takes a bit of time to write the letter, and yes, I’ve gotten much more realistic in what I can achieve in 12 months, but it is so fun to receive a letter from yourself full of hope and imagining. To laugh at her naiveté and cringe at her earnestness. To get teary at the things she wrote and somehow knew you’d need to hear them.

I highly recommend the practice, Gary.

When I turned 30, I also started writing a letter to me at age 40. That means each birthday, the ritual has become writing a letter to me for the following year, and for me at the next decade. I can’t wait to turn 40 and see how vastly different my predictions were year-on-year.

I already know 30’s certain “We’ll be married to a guy named Zachary” is going to be complemented by 31’s “So it wasn’t Zachary, but I think it might be…” and on and on it will go.

To give you a clearer sense of what I write, Gary, and to celebrate this new age of will-it-be-beige, 34, here are a few extracts from my letters throughout the years.

All names have been changed where I felt it necessary for my own sanity. Notes from me now appear in italics and parentheses.

Age 28, writing to me at age 29:

Megan, what is up girl? Well, that’s what I’m here to have a crack at guessing.

You’re waiting for a text back from Xavier…My guess is on the man front Xavier was super sweet and you had some sweet, sweet loving together (fuck, let’s hope) and then it sizzled and fizzled…(I was completely across this connection. The clarity astounds me.) As for friends, that’s less interesting to guess at because you’re one damn lucky lady and so committed in that arena. Like, look at how much you wrote about your love life and now you’re dedicating this shitty, short paragraph to them…Viv, have we taken that Tablelands trip yet? Probably not. (We hadn’t). Danette, did we fashion a room for Abby out of 15 Mary St and was it totally shit but fun? (We did and it was). Penny and Samantha, are we tatted up now? (We are)…Am I confident in my bikini yet, or has the yoga journey we’re on not yet landed us there? Cool. Player keep playing. Keep that core engaged...Love, 28-year-old Megan xxx

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If by dabbled, you mean invested huge swathes of time in the endeavour, then yeah.

That’s me.

I kind of resent the way wellness has become yet another marketplace selling the promise of wholeness. And yet, such cynicism lives squarely alongside a deep desire to be the best, or at least be seen to be the best (oh, brother).

The result being that when a new trend, or as my brain categorises it, a new metric, starts taking over my social media feeds, you'll find me simultaneously rolling my eyes at it as a statement of my virtue — Fibremaxxing, how ridiculous?! — and furiously completing a self-assessment to answer the persistent question: How do I stack up?!

Breathwork? A+. Cold plunges and protein consumption? Room for improvement. Strength training? Fibre? I’m one targeted ad away from purchasing creatine and getting a fibre coach.

But the real resentment I harbour is that there is no easy road to wellness. As Lily Allen told us, it’s Hard Out Here.

Modern life is a complex, layered place where rewards of wealth and security often come at the cost of degradations in our health and mental wellbeing. And where the list of what makes someone healthy and well is ever-increasing.

Six years ago, I went to a holistic doctor with a few health complaints. He ran some bloods and told me my cortisol levels were too high.

He’d just finished telling me that he’d inject a concentrated level of Vitamin D directly into my derrière as my levels were too low, so I figured he’d have some similar intervention to manage my cortisol.

So, will you draw the excess out in a syringe or is there a hormonal counterbalance I can take? I asked.

He looked at me blankly and said the solution was what might be my least favourite combination of words, Lifestyle change.

While I involuntarily shuddered, he added, You need to reduce your stress.

I nearly laughed in his face, though outwardly it probably looked more like I was close to tears.

Reduce stress? I chortled, and eyed the certificates on his wall suspiciously. This guy must’ve studied at some half-assed university if this was the sort of rot and nonsense he called “medical advice”.

He sat back in his seat, pressed his lips together and gave me a little shrug that indicated That’s the size of it.

Apparently, it was up to me — me?! — to manage my own life. And they say modern medicine is so advanced. Puh-lease.

Around this same time, wellness as an industry was really taking off. It beckoned, it invited, it sang a siren song: Come here, we have the answers. Let us manage your life for you.

Sign me up! I said, and soon nervous system regulation entered my everyday vernacular.

I loved the theory and learning about the body and its responses. Give me case studies, give me things to read, give me stories of change and makeovers.

It all felt like such a worthy use of my time that I couldn’t believe I nearly took that doctor up on his nefarious prescription, lifestyle change.

I busied myself with learning for a good year or two, but then I wanted to go deeper.

This is when things started to come unstuck as my nervous system coach started to talk about applying the concepts to my own life rather than just observing regulation’s presence and absence in the lives of others.

Application versus observation, I can tell you which one is way more fun, and which one feels all too reminiscent of those two foul words. You know the ones.

I was sceptical and I was scared.

All roads seemed to lead to self-awareness, to me managing my own life, and I wasn’t looking forward to either prospect.

Part of me was insistent that I wouldn’t find any evidence of dysregulation. I am a beacon of efficiency and optimisation, I proudly told my nervous system coach. My puffed-out chest deflated a little when I saw her react with sympathy, I know, sweetie.

So when the first evidence of dysregulation arrived, I was surprised. Surprised it was present and surprised about the way it had presented itself: through the way I brushed my teeth.

An activity I am pleased to report I undertake twice a day, every day. I even floss. Yeah, superior, I know.

Of course, flossing itself was not an activity I regularly undertook until a dental hygienist named Sharon shamed me into it. You might think shamed is too strong a verb, but if she could’ve tarred and feathered me for my gums, I think Sharon would’ve done it.

Even the dentist told Sharon to steady on. It’s not that bad, he soothed.

No, Sharon barked back, don’t tell her that or else she won’t do it.

I wanted to argue with her, but honestly I regard it as one of the times I’ve truly been seen by someone. How did Sharon know me so well?!

But flossing wasn’t what had caught my attention. It was the manner in which I wasn’t just brushing my teeth, but violently assaulting them.

You might consider the act of brushing your teeth to be something quite calm and sedate and even a little boring.

Well, not for me.

It turns out I was brushing my teeth like a military leader, fully adrenalised, and heading into a deadly battle against plaque and gum disease.

I could almost see my cortisol spiking and flooding my system.

A face came to mind and it wasn’t my nervous system coach. It wasn’t even Sharon, who I’m sure would’ve urged me to remember that gum disease and plaque could prove deadly, if I let them. Of course it was the doctor.

Lifestyle change, he’d told me and I’d found a litany of reasons I couldn’t.

We’ve got to get your stress down, and I’d envisioned him as the poster boy for the insidious corners of the wellness industry that demand big sacrifice and a life of blandness, deprivation, and no fun.

Yet there I was, standing in my bathroom, considering a lifestyle change. A small one, sure, but a lifestyle change nonetheless.

Maybe I could brush my teeth with a little more ease. The realisation spread slowly, softly.

Maybe I didn’t need to strip my teeth of all their enamel. Perhaps I could approach the endeavour with a bit more gentleness, slowness, and a little less efficiency.

It turned out my nervous system coach and my holistic doctor had been talking about the same thing. She just called it regulation and he called it lifestyle change, but both of them meant the same thing: you need to find ways, however small, to allow your body to come back into balance.

It was never about adding or removing, nor about buying or outsourcing.

Wellness, it turned out, could be as simple as changing the pressure you put on your bristles as you brush your teeth.

I’m not saying that moment transformed the phrase ‘lifestyle change’ for me or led to me suddenly removing all dysregulation and stress from my life. Far from it, and frankly, I believe, impossible.

But it did help me to catch myself out more, for instance when I move from a casual pace while cleaning, whether my teeth or my house or my car, to industrial action.

When I’m doing something and I feel thirsty and instead of getting water, I tell myself I can have a sip of water when I’m done.

When I start to lose myself in how to optimise a task rather than just experience it.

When I realise I'm about to hit publish on my Monday newsletter and it's still Monday in Ireland but already Tuesday (just!) in Australia.

My teeth still get brushed. My house still gets cleaned. My newsletter still gets published.

I might not do it optimally, but it’s nice to be a little more calm and a lot more hydrated.

Be well, take care, and talk soon.

Megan

It’s a land dispute.

Siege by swallow, if you will.

The land in question? My garage.

Apparently, the space has great breeding potential. At least that’s what I’m surmising from the dogged pursuit of these unwelcome nesters — it’s either a great place to raise your chicks or a sweet place to lure the ladies so they might want to mate.

I’ve already ceded territory to the local swallow population. The nook between the downpipe and the back of my house is now the official residence of this season’s newest chicks.

That’s where the land wars began a couple of weeks ago when the swallows arrived back in town after spending winter some 10,000km away in southern Africa.

I was watering my lavender when I noticed the first layers of muddy deposits accumulating above me. Immediately, I returned to last summer and how I’d had to trudge through knee-deep bird poo to get inside.

Not this year, I whispered to myself with a strong sense of villainy.

Hose in hand, and without a moment of hesitation, I pointed the nozzle at the nook as if it were a gun, ready to obliterate the handiwork of the travel-weary birds.

A voice inside tried to reason with me as I turned the nozzle to its most forceful setting.

But they’ve travelled so far. But the artistry, the effort.

I don’t care! I barked back at me, patriotism for my patch taking over. This is my home and they need to go back to where they came from.

I’d never witnessed this side of myself and I’d like to say the shock of it prompted me to turn off the hose and walk away, but it didn’t. What did was the mocking tones of the swallows.

As I watered, they dipped and swanned all around me in delight. They told me how my spray provided the perfect bonding agent to strengthen their burgeoning nest and thanked me for my assistance.

No, I’m going to tear your house down, I yelled up at them.

But I didn’t have the water pressure needed to reach their heights and eviscerate their nest. And I started to see how it was indeed creating a mortar for their mud bricks.

Whatever, doll, a couple swooned as they swooped off to collect more mud, and I swear I saw one land and hug its soft belly with its wings as it laughed at me.

I stomped off in a hunched rage and slammed the door. All that did was make the laughing swallow stop for long enough to lecture me.

You think I haven’t seen a moody chick before? She twittered, a hint of sarcasm evident. I’m about to birth another seven right on your back door here, missy. See how far all that door-slamming will get you.

They’re total beasts, these birds, don’t let anyone tell you any differently.

I decided to surrender and consoled myself with the prospect of telling that lecturing hen’s seven children what a monster their mother is when they hatch.

But the garage? The garage had to be preserved.

I’d snoozed on the downpipe — that was on me, I could concede that — but my eyes were now wide open. Wildly so, some might say.

It was time to declare war.

What ensued was a seven-day long campaign to maintain the garage.

Each morning, I’d head out my back door and eye the growing nest in the downpipe. The visual put fire in my belly and courage in my heart as I made my way to the frontline.

To some it might’ve just been a closed garage door but the swallows and I knew differently.

They waited in the tree line until I closed the house up and then they were merciless, like little missiles locked in on their target.

They taunted me, “Silly little human with your silly little car.”

Honestly, the nastiness. The arrogance of having wings that’ll take you 10,000km without forking out for a service and a new set of tyres.

I guess they’ve been watching me for some time as they knew all the right things to say to really press my buttons. I won’t repeat them but imagine the ugliest things you think about yourself being repeated back at you in birdsong as you try to start your day.

I’ll give it to them, their psychological warfare is second to none. I guess flying over Africa and hearing warlords has had an impact on them.

Meanwhile, all I had at my disposal were my limbs, and I made my way over to the garage in a strange sort of dance, all the while quietly sobbing at the verbal lashing they’d just given me. Sun Tzu would’ve been disgusted by me and my lack of strategy.

But as I raced to my car and kicked my spurs into her to reverse out of the garage at lightning pace, I admit I felt like I was mounting a Mongolian pony in the time of Genghis Khan. Giddy up!

I might not have wings, but I do have Kitty the Kuga and she never lets me down.

However, she is a hybrid and so even the hardest rev of her engine only expels a purr.

So as powerful as mounting Kitty made me feel, it was also when I was exceptionally exposed and most days I lost the battle at this point as two to three swallows would swoop in and directly up into the garage attic.

Once the swallows were in there, the only way to smoke them out was by accidental overnight lock-ins and driving them to the point of critical thirst.

Now I know I sound like I have a real taste for the blood of these birds, but I didn’t want the swallows to become trapped in the attic. There’s no fun in an unfair battle and I genuinely didn’t want to hurt them. Just their feelings.

I knew for play to continue I needed to put a cover on the attic.

First, I retrieved my step ladder. The swallows cackled as they saw me standing atop it, my eye level not even reaching the attic entrance.

This would require something more substantial, so off I galloped to my parents’ place to borrow their ladder.

As I placed it beneath the manhole and climbed each rung, the assembly line worked away in the background dropping off more mud to the Palace of the (Down)Pipe, as if showing me what they intended to do to the attic once I’d waved the white flag.

And then there I was.

In the attic space.

For the very first time.

All thoughts of swallows faded into the periphery as I started to acquaint myself with this space I see daily, that I know exists, but have never actually seen or been in.

My brain lit up with the delight of discovery. So this is what this place looks like. Huh.

There wasn’t anything particularly magical or eye-opening about the space, no treasure chest of curious origin lying tantalisingly locked, but I could see why the swallows might like it up there.

I ogled it for a good while, soaking in this ordinary-but-extraordinary-to-me-in-its-newness space, and then set about fashioning a cover for its entrance before walking out slowly, feeling like not only a war hero but an intrepid explorer.

The swallows watched me carry the ladder back inside and misconstrued the action of keeping the door open as a sign of surrender. They believed they’d cracked me with their persistence. With their relentlessness, their ruthlessness, their savagery.

And they almost did.

But, I smiled to myself, an evil grin, as I watched them from my kitchen window enter the garage and baulk at the now-blocked attic entrance. Take that, you avian assholes.

They’d ultimately lost the battle. I was the victor and it’s true what they say — victory is sweet, after all, although I admit my mornings are less vibrant than they were when our land dispute was at its peak.

I still need to clear the garage on the occasional afternoon, but with the attic closed, all it takes is a jangle of my limbs and all it costs is some gentle bullying from them.

There is a truce, at last.

And while I am proud of my conquest, a greater triumph to me has been what the whole swallow saga reminded me about.

Of how simple it is to switch things up occasionally, to have our routines interrupted, and how memorable those minor adjustments can be.

I can often think change and discovery have to come from leaving home and travelling far away. That I need a holiday before I’m permitted to have a little more fun than usual, that newness is mutually exclusive to home.

But it isn’t. The swallows have taught me that.

This month, I would like to invite you to see how you might shake things up a little, and inject even just a sliver of awe and discovery into your everyday.

You needn’t declare war with a backyard critter, you needn’t even change your routine.

I know those of us who long the most for a break away are also often those who survive their everyday clinging to their routines. So here’s the gentlest suggestion I could think of: what if this week, or this month, instead of sitting in your usual chair at the dinner table, you chose a different one?

It’s so minor, so tiny, but what if it could change your perspective, even just a little?

What if it could stretch your mind, even slightly, to see that magic is always available at our fingertips, or as it were, where we place our butt?

You might find it instead in sitting down to dinner at a table if you don’t usually. Or driving a different way to school or the shops, or choosing a different parking spot, or maybe even laying down on your bedroom floor and just looking at the ceiling?

The point isn’t to add another item to your to-do list — this is all only invitational and you can RSVP Hell to the no, No, NO! if you want.

Nor is it an invitation to go to war. Life needn’t be one battle after another.

The point is to remember you aren’t a machine locked into the same routine.

You can choose to switch it up in minor or major ways.

And sometimes the minor ways are more potent. Just like the swallows showed me.

May you remember in these final days of May that life can have more wonder in it.

You’re allowed to have fun.

Even when there’s no special occasion.

Even when you’ve got so much to get done.

Even today.

Be well, take care, and talk soon.

Megan

And 21 years later, I still think about that moment.

The year was 2005 and the incident took place in the boarding house where, during the school term, I lived alongside 40 other girls, including the friend who would obliterate me with her acid tongue and who, in the interests of respecting her privacy, we shall call Theodora.

Boarding school elicits images of neglected children, starved of love and affection.

And look, the food was not great a lot of the time and there were bouts of homesickness.

But there were also some benefits to boarding school, chief among them being there was never any need to ask if I could go over to any of my friends’ houses after school.

We already lived together.

We were available to one another at all times. Before school, after school, weekends.

On this occasion, the one emblazoned into my memory, there are certain facts lost to time and relevance and others that are still so clear to me even now, more than two decades later.

For instance, I have no clue whether it was a school day or a weekend, but what I am sure of is that it took place just before dinner one night.

I was freshly showered and no doubt was rocking a collared short-sleeve tee, board shorts and tan Colorado shoes, the latter fact being something I don’t remember from the particular incident itself but rather from my fashion archives. What an era!

My bay — what those who didn’t go to boarding school would call their room — was downstairs and Theodora’s was upstairs.

She was sharing with another girl, but that girl wasn’t there. Small mercies.

I recall that I’d made my way to her bay with intention. Something had happened to Theodora, and I’d heard about it and wanted to check on her. To find out what had really happened. Straight from the horse’s mouth.

She was towel-drying her hair when I entered her bay.

I recall offering a smattering of small talk, drawing a very shallow circle around the main topic I wanted to discuss.

Once I felt it was safely ringed, I asked Theodora what actually happened.

What she said next continues to echo in my mind at unexpected intervals, even after all these years.

She said to me:

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Since I last wrote you, the weather has greatly improved. Hallelujah!

I’ve worked up a sweat in the heat of 18°C. Yes, 18°C is now a temperature my body registers as hot! — it’s mad, I know.

The sun’s presence has beckoned me to return to my Australian sun-mum vigilance, applying sunscreen (SPF-50, of course) as if it were buttercream and my face a cake begging to be iced.

My melanin has successfully been maintained at shade “Is she apparition or alive?”, a complexion previously exclusive to the square meterage of my ass in Australia, but which is now evident body-wide.

The difference a month can make, eh?!

It’s reminded me of the impermanence of everything.

The bad weather, it turns out, was temporary, after all.

You can remove any hint of a hue other than baby-bottom white from your skin even after three decades of harsh Australian sun exposure.

And in impermanence’s purest essence — there will be death.

In its figurative sense, yes, and also, as I was reminded this month with the sudden death of a friend here in Ireland, its literal sense too.

Life is but a fleeting moment, Gary.

Impermanence is the one certainty we are given.

Unfortunately, that means that just as the bad weather left, it will return again. Sigh.

But it also means I will have honey-coloured skin again…or at least it’s very highly likely I will become crisp with sunburn again.

Even the best sun-mums let things slip rather than slip, slop, slap at times.

Lastly, for all the death there’s been, there will be rebirth.

Life.

And for the daring among us, living.

The very nature of life is cyclical.

We loop around and around, leaving and returning, forgetting and remembering, living and dying, a series of beginnings and endings in a constant rotation.

Ebbs and flows.

An inhale and then an exhale.

Indeed, without the cycle of breath we would die.

You cannot exist if you only inhale, or only exhale. You must accommodate both.

And in allowing the opposing states to exist, harmony is found. Breath. Life.

Yet how many of us try to avoid or eliminate one state of being for its inverse?

We swap sad for happy. Poor for rich. Failure for success. Pale white for tanned skin.

But life is both ends of the spectrum and everything in between.

About ten years ago, I was listening to a podcast when the guest, a wonderful thinker, used a spiral staircase as a metaphor for the cyclical nature of being.

They said life was like climbing the stairs of a lighthouse.

As you ascend, you will cross the same point multiple times, but each time you do, you will be a little bit higher.

It resonated with me, deeply.

A quick aside:

If you feel I am being elusive by mentioning “a” podcast and the guest being “a wonderful thinker” rather than giving you their names, that’s because I cannot remember them, Gary.

I’ve an impeccable memory. I’m not afraid to say it as it’s a fact more than a brag.

But for the (fleeting) life of me, I cannot recall the details.

It’s important for me to state this from the outset as I so desperately want to credit where I first heard this metaphor.

If you ever see me deep in thought, it’s likely I’m either trying to (1) recall some other detail of this podcast episode to finally find WHO THE HECKERS SAID IT, or (2) I am similarly trying to recall what ‘90s kids TV show had this particular scene that’s been randomly playing on repeat in my mind since about 2023.

What was that podcast? What was that show?!

These are the questions which plague my consciousness.

If upon reading this, Gary, you’ve listened to the same podcast episode (possibly, On Being with Krista Tippett) or want me to recount what I recall from the aforementioned ‘90s show to help me search for it, please write me back immediately.

I know I said you’d never have to reply and this is only my second letter, but I must insist on a response if you’ve the power to put these cold cases to rest. Please.

Now, please allow me to repeat what the wonderful thinker (who we shall soon find together) said:

Life is like climbing the stairs of a lighthouse.

As you ascend, you will cross the same point multiple times, but each time you do, you will be a little bit higher.

Isn’t it beautiful to think of our life like that?

To believe we are constantly evolving.

To know we are constantly in motion, even when it doesn’t feel like it.

To take comfort in knowing you are supposed to return to the same point you’ve previously visited because it’s not actually the exact same spot, but slightly elevated.

Same location, but with a new, higher vantage point.

This makes me think of the time Cristiano Ronaldo and I shared New Year’s Eve together.

Well, we were in the exact same hotel at the exact same party…but I was on one floor and he was on another, higher, VIP level.

A different level, a different frequency, if I may add.

And what does that added height give you?

A better perspective, a fuller picture, a bit more information.

Growth.

And if you’re Cristiano Ronaldo a better NYE, no doubt.

May you remember this the next time you feel as if you’re back to square one.

You aren’t.

You’re spiralling…and that’s a great thing!

Welcome to the lighthouse. Your thighs will hate it here

Over the past decade of revisiting the metaphor, I’ve found life really does feel like walking up a spiral staircase.

You’ll start and think, This is okay. I can do this.

As you go on, you’ll soon reach a point where your thighs start to cry tears of lactic acid that run down your calves.

You’ll think you’re almost there only to round a corner and see even more stairs.

You’ll be in the agony of a Pilates class countdown and the darkness of a winter.

Until you see a landing. You’ve made it to the next level!

You are invincible. You belong on the cover of Women’s / Men’s Health.

You’ll stand for a moment breathing in your success, the brightness of summer.

You won’t be questioning where you are when you’re standing in triumph.

The next landing will be visible in your mind’s eye and you’ll take off feeling certain you can handle this next flight with ease.

Only to find that your thighs and calves start to ache again, your breath is ragged, you aren’t sure whether you can do it, and the negative self-talk kicks in.

Where did I go wrong?! How am I back here again?!

You’ll have all the questions when you feel like you’ve failed.

Not only failed, but ended up exactly where you were before.

Except, we know now you’re not back where you started.

It might be very familiar, and feel and look a lot like where you were. But it’s not.

Because you’re on the spiral staircase of life.

Check out that view!

Glen Powell’s rig reinforces the power of spiralling

I couldn’t help but notice the spiral physically in action in the new Twisters movie and Glen Powell’s character’s rig.

And when I say rig, no, I don’t mean his body, Gary, but because you mentioned it, now I am thinking about it…

Okay, enough of that. I’m back.

In the film, GP’s rig is equipped with augers that can be deployed so the vehicle cannot be swept away in the twister he’s chasing.

If you’re wondering what an auger is, I’ve included the scene I’m referencing, Gary, but basically it’s a spiral blade that digs down into the earth.

Watching it, I thought about how a straight blade wouldn’t work.

They’d be ripped out as easily as tent pegs.

We’re urged to follow the straight path, but there’s less strength in the linear.

It’s the spiral that allows us the opportunity to deepen, ground, and stabilise.

Indeed, what shape is our DNA?

That’s right. It’s a double helix, which looks incredibly like a spiral staircase, or auger.

The very essence of who we are is a spiral.

Spiralling’s had a hard time and been unfairly treated

I was thinking how brilliant my metaphor was when my brain decided to go, Yeah, but a twister is a spiral too.

Thanks, brain.

So I’ll concede, Gary, yes, a spiral can be destructive, sure. In the same way too much of anything can be harmful.

Everything can have a toxic expression. The spiral is not exempt.

But I personally believe a spiral is not a bad thing and deserves a rebrand.

In modern parlance, spiralling has been given the context of being twister-like and signifying a state of panic, descending, out-of-control into the abyss.

Yet most “spiralling” I’ve witnessed is more like spinning out.

There’s no height or depth being gained.

The person “spiralling” is simply spinning around the same level again and again.

So I’m declaring the cultural moment of “spiralling” to be over, and the season of spinning out to have started.

And if you’d like a setting for spinning out, the one I’ve chosen is a velodrome.

For when I am spinning out, I see the thought I’ve latched onto as a little determined cyclist, legs pumping, feet clicked into pedals, seemingly unable to stop, and looking precarious and as if it might crash at any moment.

The velodrome is the place to avoid. The spiral is the place to be.

Growth isn’t linear, and neither are we

Of course, each of us will spin out from time to time.

The goal isn’t to stop spinning out, but to realise while there’ll be moments of spinning out, they exist on the spiral, and the spiral is always in motion, always evolving.

I find it incredibly reassuring that to rise and deepen, to evolve and stabilise, we must revisit the same terrain, we must pass over the same point again and again.

The tree that was planted in spring and survives its first summer will lose its leaves in autumn and look dead throughout the winter, and yet come spring again, there it’ll be, the same season and the same tree, but both a little different.

A warmer spring, a taller tree.

The tree isn’t more alive in summer than it is in winter.

Similarly, you aren’t only living when you are winning.

Nor is life only in the growing, the stretching, the shedding.

It’s in both. It’s in all.

Wherever you are on the spiral right now, you are alive and in the exact right season for you.

I promise, Gary.

The spiral is the place to be.

Be well, take care, and talk soon.

Your pen pal,

Megan

What a week he and his lucky lady had.

And what a deserved break for them both on Sunday!

The following songs — like Craig David’s hit 7 Days — are also intended to take you from Monday through to Sunday, and are indisputably grounded in soul…just a slightly different flavour of soul to David’s.

Listening is optional, but highly encouraged — as is dancing and belting out the tunes in the shower / car / at the top of your lungs.

#7 Depth Over Distance, Ben Howard

Lyrics that look into your soul 👀

Depth over distance every time, my dear
And this tree of ours may grow tall in the woods
But it's the roots that will bind us here

The truth to take with you (file it!) 📁

How much of what we want to get done this week is actually about reach?

In an age where success is measured in follower counts, we so often desire to be widely known. But what about being well-known?

A well literally goes down and its depth quenches the thirst of entire villages.

Without depth, trees topple.

As Ben Howard sings here, our tree might grow tall enough for us to be widely known, but it’s our roots, our depth, that sustains us.

The song’s application in my life ✍️

Where I’ve been reaching lately:

When my newsletter came out last month, I imagined there’d be hundreds…okay, thousands of followers that would flock to me instantly. Substack might crash for all the new subscribers fighting to get a slice of my words.

Surprisingly, that hasn’t happened…yet.

My ego didn’t love seeing I wasn’t an instant bestseller, but I consoled my sweet, darling ego with the reminder we value resonance over reach.

Depth over distance every time, my dear.

My intention is to build strong foundations first. Maybe this tree will grow into a redwood or maybe I’ll have the root structure of a weed you can’t ever fully get rid of. Either way, I’m staying.

#6 The Old Story, Trevor Hall, Emory Hall

Lyrics that look into your soul 👀

You just gotta let that old story go

The truth to take with you (file it!) 📁

What old stories are you still telling yourself?

Our devices tell us when there’s a software update available, and we have stickers in our cars that tell us when they are due for a service.

But when was the last time you checked your metaphorical operating system / oil levels?

Trevor and Emory Hall’s song reminds us the stories we tell may feel true, but they are “all in our head”, and it’s up to us to “let them go”.

The song’s application in my life ✍️

Old stories I’m letting go of lately:

This is quite benign, but let’s start here all the same: I have been telling myself “I can’t stand scary movies”.

Now this was very true of a young teenage Megan who was haunted by a Dakota Fanning film in which she has a split personality (Google tells me the film’s called Hide and Seek).

It was also very true of a slightly-older teenage Megan who tried to watch the Saw franchise with her friends and soon realised she didn’t have the constitution for it after her first foray with Saw II. Nope.

But 33-year-old (and still somehow a teenager) Megan? Heck, she watched Heretic late last year in the dark, home alone, in rural Ireland, and slept soundly afterwards. We gotta let the old story go. I can watch scary movies…and enjoy them.

A deeper story I am trying to let go of? Here’s three for you: (1) I have to be liked by all, (2) I must optimise everything I do, and (3) I am behind. Ooft. Next song, please.

#5 Let Me Be Wrong, Jensen McRae

Lyrics that look into your soul 👀

Trust my gut and belly flop…

…And I've been good too long
Let me be wrong

The truth to take with you (file it!) 📁

I love this song of Jensen’s as a big old permission slip for the overachieving people pleaser who fears being behind (not that I personally know anyone like that…).

So you trusted your gut and belly flopped? That’s okay. That’s learning experientially like my 'belly flop' of a ski trip.

This week, can you give yourself permission to get back out there and try again? Can you let go of ‘should’ and embrace listening to your gut? Even if it means you flop?

After all, a belly flop is a beautiful sight to behold. It means you took a leap, you dove in and gave it a go. Big fan of the belly flop. Huge.

I’m also a massive fan of the refrain “let me be wrong”.

Most of us are trying so hard to do this living thing ‘right’. But it’s the mistakes and wrong turns that help us discover what’s important to us and how we want to orient ourselves.

So let’s be wrong!

The song’s application in my life ✍️

How I’m letting myself be wrong:

There are so many ways I’m letting myself possibly be wrong right now.

My move to Ireland was not part of a five-year plan. It was not really planned out at all. I sat on the idea and first came major excitement and an emphatic “Yes, do it!”. Then came along the trepidation and “I don’t think I will”.

Eventually I could hold both sides of the coin in some kind of balance like Lady Justice holding her scales. And the discomfort of going to Ireland outweighed the discomfort of staying.

Since I’ve arrived, there’ve been multiple points of “What’s the next move, Megs?!” and people wanting me to give them an answer straight away. But I’ve learned “I don’t know” is a full response.

I’ve learned to wait. To let the emotional wave pass and then feel into what feels best. It might not look or sound like the right move to others, but then I say to myself, “Ah well, let’s see what happens”. Let me be wrong!

#4 Sympathy Magic, Florence + The Machine

Lyrics that look into your soul 👀

So I don't have to be worthy
I no longer try to be good
It didn't keep me safe
Like you told me that it would

The truth to take with you (file it!) 📁

Florence knows how to get right to the heart of it, doesn’t she?!

You don’t have to be worthy. You don’t have to be good. Trying to be those things is not a guarantee of safe passage through life. Not at all.

We all seek security and stability, and I get it! Shelter is a core human need, as is belonging.

But if you think you can remove all danger / heartache / pain by being good, I’m afraid you’re in for a world of hurt.

The world is not watching how worthy you are of good things happening, or rather of bad things not happening to you. It’s not interested in how well you present yourself or your case.

Life doesn’t discriminate. The ‘good’ and ‘bad’ alike will know success and failure, love and heartbreak, life and loss.

There’s freedom in that, if you choose to see it.

You don’t have to try so hard, you don’t have to try to be good or worthy.

You can simply be.

The song’s application in my life ✍️

How I’m trying to be less good:

At the moment, I’m discussing an idea I have with a loved one. They don’t think it’s a great idea to pursue, but I do.

Subsequently, I feel quite very uncomfortable.

I do not like being in disagreement with those I love. But I have lived out the version of the story where I decide they must be right and side with them, and I didn’t like how it felt. “It didn’t keep me safe” as Florence says.

So right now, I’m trying to remember I don’t have to be the good girl who follows someone else’s instructions.

I will always listen to what those who love me have to say. I want them to feel heard.

But I know now the best thing I can do for everybody is to do what feels right for me.

#3 Say Less, Rosie Darling

Lyrics that look into your soul 👀

You find the chaos, if that's what you believe in

The truth to take with you (file it!) 📁

A reminder that you create your own reality. If you believe something will be chaos, it probably will be.

This is less about manifesting the perfect week because as per above, it doesn’t matter how good or worthy or positive you are, life is going to serve you up lessons and hardships.

Instead, it’s a reminder that one thing you can control is what you choose to think and believe.

It’s not easy to override the brain’s unconscious decision-making powers but every time you do consciously make a choice, you’re reclaiming a little bit of you.

The song’s application in my life ✍️

Where I’m trying to be more conscious in my choices:

Something I unconsciously do is say to myself “I’m going to quickly grab X / do Y / eat Z”. Quickly being the chief operative word (COW, do we make that a thing?).

Once I noticed it for the first time, I couldn’t believe how often I said it to myself. I’d baked a false sense of urgency into nearly every action I took. Pure madness.

Now I catch myself and pause and repeat the sentiment without any mention of pace: “I’m going to grab X / do Y / eat Z”. Sounds ridiculously simple but it’s been a game changer for me.

#2 There Will Be Time, Mumford & Sons, Baaba Maal

Lyrics that look into your soul 👀

There is a time, a time to love
A time to sing, a time to shine
A time to leave, a time to stay
There is a time, a time to cry
A time to love, a time to live
There is a time, a time to sing
A time to love

I also want to also share this translation of Baaba Maal’s lyrics at the beginning of the song. Apparently he is singing:

Listen to me, I want to tell you something
The reason I love you is because
You are the only one who has taught me how to love
And appreciate life

Isn’t that beautiful?!

The truth to take with you (file it!) 📁

You’ve got time. There’s actually plenty of time. I promise.

It might not be the time to do or produce, but the time to be and experience.

It might not be the time to find your passion or discover your purpose, but the time to be a parent / friend and collector of ideas.

It might not be the time to travel but the time to fall in love with your imagination or reading or films.

It might not be the time for good health or financial abundance but the time to rest and receive help / love / support / a lesson.

Can you let yourself be in the time you are in, right now? Can you believe this might actually be the right time? That if something’s not happening it’s because it’s not the right time?

The song’s application in my life ✍️

My relationship with time lately:

I have held tightly to the belief that I have not done enough since being in Ireland. Not only have I not seen enough of the country, I’ve also not travelled enough of Europe. Most importantly, I’ve not produced enough.

“I’ve had all this time here and what do I have to show for it?” This was a nice little mental loop I liked to play on repeat last year.

But as I sat down to launch this newsletter, I realised I had been doing enough and was in the exact right time.

I’d been in a time of releasing a lot of resistance and old stories. Now I was in the time of creating and not just creating but with ease. There was time, after all.

#1 Free, Rudimental (feat. Emeli Sandé)

Lyrics that look into your soul 👀

Maybe something’s wrong with me
But, whoa, at least I am free, I am free

The truth to take with you (file it!) 📁

Could there be a better song to end on than one that reminds us we might be freaks but WHOA at least we are free?! I don’t think there is.

You might not do yoga and have never tried pilates. Not many people might want you at their parties.

You might drink a little more than recommended. This world might not be exactly what your heart expected.

You might not be a Sunday believer. You might be still trying to find your home.

You might not be too good with money neither. You might have two left feet.

You might be trying to find your way, some way.

But c’est la vie. That’s life, baby.

At least you are free.

The song’s application in my life ✍️

How I’m being a freak and being free anyway:

Every day in every way, I am some kind of a freak to someone (including me).

And every day in every way, I am also free to choose how I respond to life, how I spend my time, and how I show up for myself and others.

I can often forget that I’m free. Very often, in fact.

I think that’s why I write this newsletter, to check in and remember. I am free.

What a week it’s going to be!

As a bonus, let’s wrap this up with a word from our patron saint of smooth soul, the one and only Craig David:

I’ve also created a playlist for you of the 7 (+ 1 bonus) songs for whenever you want to drop into it. You can find it on Spotify here:

I hope you enjoy listening.

Monday through to Sunday.

And when it comes to Sunday?

Chill.

Be well, take care, and talk soon.

Megan

The experience reminded me there’s knowing something theoretically, and then there’s knowing something experientially.

For example, there’s reading all about skiing, snow, the Austrian alps. There’s watching the Winter Olympics and understanding the various rules of alpine ski events and how they are scored.

Of course, knowledge is power. But reading facts and watching without participation?

It’s only theoretical. Abstract. Academic.

Then there’s actually hitting the slopes yourself. There’s hiring the gear and discovering the kind-of-uncomfortable angle of ski boots, the awkwardness of carrying your skis.

There’s clicking your boots into your skis and wobbling onto the magic carpet to take you up the mountain (ahem, beginner’s hill). There’s you hobbling off and suddenly there’s you

Doing the thing. You are skiing!

Well, sort of.

If someone were to describe what you’re doing, they’d need a verb, so why not choose skiing?

You’re upright on skis, aren’t you? And you’re definitely moving downhill.

In fact, you’re careening

It turns out knowing theoretically how to ski is not the same as skiing. All the theory in the world does not a bona fide ski bunny make.

Unfortunately.

Instead, you have to take the theory and apply it yourself in your own way.

You have to live it.

What I found to be true on the slopes of Gosau is this:

In living it, you’ll forget the theory completely, as you keep on “skiing” — falling and failing and finding your feet, on repeat. Again and again and again and exasperatingly, exhaustingly ahh-ghen.

Until suddenly you have an epiphany about your form.

In response to the groaning of your leg-hinges and cry of your hamstrings, the thought appears, “I don’t think my knees are meant to be knocked together like that.”

You make the adjustments that you and only you have discovered and feel you are finally becoming one with the snow.

So much so you are a pioneer of ski form. You are Ernest Shackleton. You are Amelia Earhart. You are Marco Polo.

A brave and intrepid explorer at the frontline of discovery.

You take your not-knocked knees and pizza-sliced legs back up the bunny hill to enlighten your ski instructor.

“That would be handy to tell people beforehand,” you say to her.

She rolls her eyes and mutters something that sounds like “I did tell you that,” although you’re fairly certain she’s just chastising herself in her native German for not knowing this critical information herself.

“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” you say and push off downhill.

You still careen out of control, but now you know there’s just another piece of the puzzle for you to discover.

Even Shackleton got himself locked in ice. Every voyage a challenge there must be.

That’s experiential. Learning first-hand. Hands-on.

You can view the power of my lived experience in the Alps below:

Yes, there’s much room for improvement.

Yes, I might still be close to zero, but I’m no longer at zero.

I was recently talking to my friend about this difference between the theoretical versus the experiential in her own life.

She wasn’t skiing but rather navigating some feelings after a situation arose at work.

She said to me, “And y’know I know I am enough…it’s just that I would like Sandra to confirm that with some words of affirmation.”

Based on my friend’s tone, I knew she didn’t really know she is enough. She knew it, sure. She could tell us all the theory of it, but had she fallen on her ass 1,000 times learning to really know it? Not yet.

So I said to her, “I think if you actually knew you were enough, if you believed it, you wouldn’t be feeling upset with Sandra.

“Instead, you might go ‘Ugh, I wish I’d asked Sandra for feedback’ or say to me ‘I’m feeling a bit sensitive about how today went and need some validation.’

“But I think you’re feeling you aren’t enough and using Sandra’s silence as evidence of that.”

“Go on,” she said, trepidatiously.

“I think we often use ‘I know I’m enough’ as a way to avoid believing it,” I said.

“We say ‘Don’t worry, I know I’m enough’. What we might as well be saying is ‘This is not and I repeat not a self-love or self-worth issue. This is about Sandra and Sandra only.

“I do not need to look within. The problem isn’t in here, it’s out there, okay?!”

I heard my friend chuckle so I continued.

“It’s easier to paint Sandra as an ignorant, selfish cow of a colleague rather than sitting in the discomfort of learning your value isn’t in how commendable Sandra thinks you are.

“You are enough. Even without her praise.”

“You might have a point,” she said, in the reluctant tone we both assume when we know the other is right but aren’t quite ready to concede.

Because that’s what friendship is for me. Both my friends and I knowing — through our lived experiences — that while I might be shining a light on a blind spot they have today, tomorrow they’ll be holding the torch to my shadows for me.

Each of us taking it in turns to be either the beginner skier discovering her knees for the first time or the instructor gritting their teeth, quietly thinking “I did tell you that.”

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Learning you’re enough is tougher than skiing

How about you? Do you believe you are enough?

Even if you SUCK at skiing like me?

Even when you’re ready to make Sandra public enemy No. 1 like my friend?

Even when you don’t read your book before bed or get 10,000 steps or eat enough protein?

Have you found yourself careening down the beginner’s slope realising “So this is what they meant when they said I had to learn I was enough as I am. Well, f*ck no, I do not have a handle on this.”

Or is the concept of enough-ness a pristine piece of theory that lives in a metaphorical book on your shelf to be brought out from time to time to show you understand you are meant to love yourself, and also you certainly aren’t the problem?

If you aren’t sure, here’s a good indicator you mightn’t be completely on board with knowing you are enough just yet — whenever you use the word should.

Should is a shroud, get rid of it

I should read my book before bed rather than scroll.

I should get in 10,000 steps today.

I should eat more protein.

I should be a better skier by now.

I should make Sandra like me.

Draining, isn’t it?!

It’s like the word ‘should’ has been stuffed full of anvils. It’s filled with weight. Heavy.

I call it the heaviness of guilt for being inadequate.

When we say ‘should’ we might as well preface it with an apology.

“I’m sorry, I should eat more protein. My bad. I’ve seen the TikTok videos, I know it’s going to transform my body. I’m sorry I’m not doing enough.”

When we say ‘should’ we are leaning into the human pattern and urge to

Fix it. Smooth it. Make it okay.

But we don’t need to apologise for who we are. We might need to apologise for our actions from time to time, but not who we are and how we spend our time. We don’t need to fix things, make sure everything is smooth sailing, and everyone is okay.

So what’s the solution?

I’ve trained myself now to hear the word ‘should’ and question its place instantly.

Whenever ‘should’ comes a-knocking on my lips, I make a quick adjustment and choose ‘could’ instead.

I feel the difference immediately.

“I should read my book before bed” becomes “I could read my book before bed.”

One is laden with self-reproach while the other is full of the light and airy freedom to choose.

Ultimately, that’s what it all comes down to: your choice.

Will you choose to try something new rather than stay in the safety of theory?

Will you choose to believe you are enough, that you are worthy as you are right now?

Will you choose to burden yourself with ‘should’ or lighten your load with ‘could’?

Whatever you choose, I hope you’ll allow yourself the chance to fumble through it, to fall over and fail.

We constantly need to be reminded about this loving ourselves thing.

So, let this be your reminder this month. Let me be a constant reminder.

You are enough.

You could do that thing.

You might suck at it, and that’s okay.

You’ll still be enough.

Be well, take care, and talk soon.

Megan

The schoolyard memories might be a bit too potent. There may be a desire for a moniker that’s a bit more chic / merch-worthy.

I personally like to imagine the physical manifestation of all our idiosyncrasies and peccadilloes creating a carnival of freakish beasts — let’s call it, leaning into fantasycore.

That’s just my personal preference and you’re permitted to choose your own too.

Each of us are responsible for the perspective we choose and we can, at any given moment, choose to reclaim ‘being a Karen’ or, y’know, being an absolute FREAK.

However you define it, I believe each of us comes into this world fully (de)formed (if you’ll permit me to extend the freakishness) with our own quirks and our own special brand of weirdness.

And yet, while we have being odd in common, often we find our freak energy just doesn’t match with someone else’s.

It’s at that moment — when our freak is recognised and rejected by another — that the rejector might scream in our face “Whadda freak!” and run over to Gary and the gang at the swing set to tell them why we deserve to be ostracised.

They may choose a more subtle option of showing disdain and disgust, or they might tell us they no longer love us / like us / want to be friends.

The point is that when we let out a bit of our freak and it isn’t matched, it usually makes us feel as cold and alone and scared as that sole polar bear left clinging to the ice caps.

It sucks.

That disconnect, that feeling of not vibing or clicking with someone?

I call that operating at different frequencies, and it’s the opposite of matching freq.

The science behind energy and frequency

Before we really get into it, I want to address the cautious reader who might be hesitant about adopting the word frequency and letting it nuzzle into their vocabulary and everyday use for the fact that it’s about energy and a bit too woo-woo.

Come here, sit with me. I promise there’s every possibility you belong here too.

You’re not wrong. Energy and frequency have been bandied around a lot lately, and it can seem exclusively attached to the mystical, New Age, alternative, woo-woo witches. To the astrological queens who yearn to tell you about their Saturn return and warn you when Mercury is retrograde.

If that makes you or your partner or your parent uncomfortable, may I offer this as a rebuttal:

“Do you follow the sun?

“You let it dictate your actions?!

“You plan your harvest around the seasons?!!

“The weather affects your mood?!?!

“How woo of you.”

And if you require a more clear-cut, scientific defence, I’ve got one of those too.

May I suggest asking your beloved naysayer whether they’ve heard of the famous equation e=mc²?

Guess what the ‘e’ stands for? Yeah, that’s right, energy.

Even Einstein was a bit woo.

In fact, his famous relativity formula (e=mc²) proved mass — the amount of matter or ‘stuff’ in an object — and energy are interchangeable.

He proved that everything — everything! — is just energy.

If it’s good enough for Einstein, it’s good enough for me.

Frequency in action

Once upon a time, in a faraway land called Ireland, my mum called me feeling the shame and frustration of being bested by technology (You know the feeling? Yeah, unfortunately and despite being a millennial, me too.)

In this instance, it was an automatic gate giving her grief.

No matter how hard or how many times she pressed the button on her buzzer, no matter the angle or distance she tried, no matter the will, no matter the power, the gate would not open.

She asked me whether I might try, convinced it had to be her and not the gate.

I similarly tried all the tricks I knew, which I’ve got to confess weren’t many. There’s not a lot you can do when it comes to gate buzzers…I’m not sure you can even try turning it off and turning it back on again.

But that wouldn’t have helped anyway.

It turns out either the gate or buzzer had jumped channels and were now set to different frequencies.

A quick turn of a dial on the gate set it to the same frequency as the buzzer and, hey presto, the buzzer and the gate were talking again. Vibing, even.

It stuck with me as a metaphor for those times when we don’t vibe with another person, or a place, or a job, or whatever it might be.

And what’s our usual reaction?

We make ourselves wrong for the disconnect and desperately set about trying to fix it.

We press the button over and over, we try new angles, we get others involved, anything to make it work.

But what if we are just operating at different frequencies to that person, place, or job? What if nothing is wrong, and the metaphorical gate’s simply not opening because the vibe is off?

Can’t we just adjust our frequency?

Yes, sure, we could adjust our frequency to match that of the person, place, or job. But often, I’ve found, that calls for us to downsize rather than up-level.

And who wants to dim their light to open an old gate?

Even if a person, place, or job is operating at a higher frequency, something aspirational, it can get tiring if we aren’t there yet.

In one instance, we’ve got that dimmed light that’s about to go out; in the other, we’ve got a blown bulb that’s completely burnt out.

One asks us to shrink or cut away at ourselves and the other asks us to be more, do more, add-on.

Neither is sustainable.

It’s very much a Goldilocks scenario — too big/too small, too hot/too cold.

But what about just right?

What if it were enough for us to be surrounded with people, places, and jobs that do match our frequency?

In fact, I think that is exactly what we ought to seek out.

Finding the ‘just right’ that fits

So let’s celebrate where our life is filled with resonance, and notice where we might be standing at closed gates, futilely hoping they’ll open.

My hope is — regardless of whether you match my freq or not — you’ll find much resonance to relish, and be able to walk away from any gates that won’t open.

Even when you are the most charming.

Even when you say just the right thing.

Even when you pre-empt the gate’s needs.

Even when you don’t double text it.

There’s nothing wrong with your buzzer. It’s just not the right gate for you.

Walking away from gates we’ve set our eyes (heart) on is HARD, I know, especially when the gate once opened and you adore the chalet behind it. But, I hope you can.

For it is only once you’ve walked away from one gate that you might find one that resonates with you as you are.

Where do you think the whole one door closes, another opens saying comes from?

In Shakespeare’s day the saying was in fact ‘ye gate doth shuteth so yonder gate priseth open and thou is blest with the joy of a thousand suns’. True story…

And don’t you want to feel the joy of a thousand suns?

Even when you are charmless.

Even when you say the wrong thing.

Even when you are inconsiderate.

Even when you send a slew of texts.

Even (especially) when you are an absolute FREAK.

It’s what you deserve. We all do.

Be well, take care, and talk soon.

Megan

The tuning fork experiment was shared on this Reddit thread.